Detroit Lakes, MN (KDLM) – The Minnesota Twins ended their season by ending someone else’s. The Texas Rangers were eliminated from postseason contention on the final day of the regular season with a 6-4 loss Sunday to the Twins at Target Field.
Texas needed a win and a Houston loss to the Athletics, but the Astros, who held the division tiebreaker, beat the Athletics 9-0. The Rangers finished a game behind first-place Houston in the AL West after dropping two of three in Minnesota.
Dean Kremer earned the win for the Twins, allowing one run on three hits over seven innings with no walks and four strikeouts, needing just 74 pitches. He retired 15 of the last 16 hitters he faced and went 4-1 with a 3.48 ERA in 10 starts after the Twins acquired him from Baltimore on August 1st.
Josh Bell led the offense with three RBI. He opened the scoring with a sacrifice fly in the first inning. After Danny Jansen tied it with a leadoff homer in the third, Bell put Minnesota back in front 3-1 with a two-out, two-run home run to right later that inning.
The Twins added two more in the fifth. Ryan Jeffers drew a bases-loaded walk to score Walker Jenkins, and Kody Clemens followed with an RBI single to make it 5-1.
Pinch hitter Elias Diaz homered off A.J. Minter to start the eighth, but Royce Lewis answered with a solo shot to center in the bottom half. Corey Seager hit a two-run homer in the ninth to pull Texas within two, but that was as close as the Rangers got.
Minnesota finished 77-85, a seven-win improvement in manager Derek Shelton’s first season, and third in the AL Central. The Twins drew 1,733,203 fans to Target Field this season, the lowest total since the ballpark opened in 2010.
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