TORONTO _ Titanic home runs, lengthy rallies, noisy crowds and that deafening hockey goal horn _ after a one-day respite, Rogers Centre reverted to its unwelcome form for the Twins on Saturday. One other annoyance for the Twins: a tough loss.
Any momentum created by Bartolo Colon's shutdown of the Blue Jays on Friday dissipated quickly in the Canadian sunshine. Kendrys Morales and Josh Donaldson slugged fastballs into orbit, Tyler Duffey relived an old nightmare, and Dillon Gee's second Twins start was a lot messier than his first. Max Kepler manufactured a rally with an eighth-inning grand slam, but it all added up to a 10-9 loss to the Jays.
It was the sixth time in their last seven games in Canada that the Twins had been swallowed up by the atmosphere and jet stream in the former SkyDome, giving up at least eight runs each time. All six of those previous blowups were Minnesota losses, yet the Twins scored at least a half-dozen runs in five of them. The Twins do plenty of hitting here, too, in other words, but the Blue Jays are the masters.
The game came with some late-inning ugliness, too, that disappointed any Twins thinking of a big comeback. Kepler lined a fat, middle-of-the-plate pitch from Toronto reliever Ryan Tepera into the Twins' right-field bullpen in the eighth inning, his second career grand slam, to cut the deficit to one run.
But John Curtiss, pitching in his second major league game about 17 hours after his first, walked Ezequiel Carrera on four pitches in the bottom of the inning, opening the door to some mistake-filled turbulence in the bottom of the inning. Carrera immediately stole second, and rookie catcher Mitch Garver, behind the plate for the first time in his career, sailed the throw into center field, moving the runner to third.
Donaldson then skied a popup about 40 feet behind first base, where three Twins converged but none made the catch, allowing Carrera to score and Donaldson to reach second base. A ground out moved him to third, and when Curtiss bounced a slider, Donaldson scored another insurance run.
That became important in the ninth, when the Twins gamely rallied once more. Zack Granite led off with a single, Eduardo Escobar smacked a grounder that first baseman Justin Smoak allowed to roll between his legs for a two-base error, and Brian Dozier singled Granite home. Joe Mauer, who has six hits in the series' first two games, smacked a hard one-hopper directly at Toronto closer Roberto Osuna, who turned it into a double play that scored a run but extinguished the rally. Jorge Polanco grounded out to end a frustrating game for the Twins.
Gee, the latest pitcher to enter the Twins' revolving-door rotation, gave up four runs over four innings, including the homers to Morales and Donaldson. Duffey, who had not pitched in Toronto since his six-run, two-inning MLB debut in 2015, faced five batters, and four of them reached base and eventually scored, on three singles and a walk.
