Minneapolis – The Minnesota Twins are in a spot they never want to find themselves in. They’ve lost seven of their last eight games, and three of their last four games at Target Field have been blowout losses where they’ve allowed 16 or more runs to their opponents.
Minnesota’s scouting reports on Jacob Misiorowski gave them some idea of what the 23-year-old Grain Valley, Mo., native had in his arsenal. They couldn’t fathom that they wouldn’t be able to get anything against him until the 7th inning for a kid only making his second MLB start.
“I think it was a good day for Misiorowski,” said Twins manager Rocco Baldelli. “I think he simply just had an excellent day on the mound. He got in the zone when he needed to early, then he was able to throw … I mean, the stuff is good. He’s very good, and he was able to put the ball where he wanted to today.”
Misiorowski dazzled in front of 28,000, who sounded split down the middle between Twins and Milwaukee Brewers fans based on the cheers across Target Field. He was perfect through six innings and had a dueling no-hitter up against Joe Ryan through the first four innings of the game.
Ryan allowed three walks to the Brewers offense through four innings, and they were able to capitalize on one of them. Center fielder Jackson Chourio walked, stole second, advanced to third on a fielder’s choice, then scored on a sac fly to make it 1-0.
The score was still 1-0 as Ryan returned to the mound in the top of the sixth with 91 pitches on the night, but he was out to face the top of the Brewers lineup for a third time.
For most of the season, Ryan has dominated opposing batters when facing them a third time. They had .143/.226/.304 slash line going into Friday night’s start. However, Ryan exited after two one-out hits from Sal Frelick and an RBI double from Jackson Chourio with 101 pitches on the night.
“I think they had a really good plan today,” said Ryan. “I think Vazky (Christian Vázquez) did a great job of calling a good game, and the first time through, second time through it was great. They were just fouling a lot of things off and just kind of flicking stuff around. You could see that.”
This was only the third time all season Ryan had a three-walk game, and with Milwaukee’s hitters fouling many balls off him on two-strike counts, it cost him more than he was hoping for. Ryan would have preferred to go deeper into this start to give Minnesota’s bullpen rest, after they pitched 19 ⅔ innings over the road trip.
“Obviously, we had a long road trip and a lot of relievers got some action, so ideally, for me, to go 6-7 innings would’ve been great,” Ryan said. “I think I could’ve done that with a couple more balls in play, but we had outstanding defense from Kody and Bader today, picking up some huge outs, so that helped a lot and probably limited or got me the opportunity to go out there for the sixth.”
Everything fell apart for the Twins when they turned to the bullpen. Still, Christian Yelich did the most damage. Yelich has had a decent career against Minnesota in his Brewers tenure. He had a career .257/.331/.412 slash line with four home runs and 18 RBI in 36 games versus the Twins.
He took things to another level against Minnesota’s bullpen in the later innings of this one, going 4-for-4, with two bases-clearing doubles and setting a career high 8 RBI, creating a devastating 10-run differential against them. Yelich’s late-inning performance led to Jonah Bride’s fourth relief appearance for the Twins in the last 15 days.
Yelich’s tying a career feat was a highlight of the game, but not the highlight. The Brewers had a game talked about across the league, thanks to Misiorowski’s performance on the mound.
37 of his 86 pitches at or over 99 MPH, with an additional 29 over 100 MPH. He had a slider averaging 93 MPH that topped out to 96.7 MPH on the radar gun. Not to mention, six perfect innings that extended his no-hit inning streak to start a career at 11 innings, an MLB record.
“You don’t see that,” said Twins utilityman Willi Castro. “You don’t see a guy throwing a slider 95, 96. It’s really hard to pick up. But yeah, good for him.”
The Twins at least had the fortune of ending the no-hit streak and knocking Misiorowski out of the game after he allowed a lead-off walk to Byron Buxton in the seventh and then a two-run homer to Matt Wallner after that. While there was slight relief in knocking Misiorowski out and ending his streak, it couldn’t wipe away the awful taste of allowing 17 runs on 19 hits.
“He was great,” said Ryan, complimenting Misiorowski. “I’ve actually seen some videos of him in the minors, and he’s got some of the best stuff in the big leagues. He’s pretty electric. So obviously, I knew it was going to be a tough day for the offense on that side. But yeah, he threw the ball really well.”
The 17-6 loss marked 2025 as the third season in franchise history when a Twins pitching staff allowed 16 or more runs in losses at home. The other two times were in 1996 at the Metrodome and Target Field in 2017, when they lost all three of those games in May.
Minnesota has a 6-12 record in June, and no one player or coach is solely to blame. Baldelli acknowledged this is a team-wide issue they must address so they can quickly move on from this game and turn things around collectively.
“As a team, we’ve got to come together as a team right now and collectively step up,” he said. “Myself included, the coaching staff, all the players. As a team, we have to do better than what we’re doing right now.”