SEATTLE – The Twins’ bullpen needed a breather. Chris Paddack provided it.
A day after seven Twins relievers combined to pitch 6 1/3 innings, Paddack very nearly threw the first complete game of his Major League career on Sunday. He still equaled a career best with eight innings and set a career high by throwing 110 pitches before Minnesota fell, 2-1, to the Mariners at T-Mobile Park.
Paddack was charged with one run on four hits. He issued a single walk and struck out 10, by far his season high. He hadn’t reached double figures in strikeouts since May 8, 2024, also against Seattle. The only blemish was a solo homer by the impossibly hot Cal Raleigh.
It was a start that had been in the offing for a while. Paddack struggled in his first two starts of the year. Over his next five, he pitched effectively but never lasted more than five innings. Since early May, he has been making it deeper into games, and on Sunday he carried the kind of heavy load he has wanted all along.
“One of these days, I can’t wait for that moment to get the opportunity to go back out for the ninth,” Paddack said. “I shook [manager] Rocco [Baldelli]’s hand, because [110] pitches, first time in my career, I think I’ve earned that. I was waiting for that moment. So I shook his hand and thanked him for believing in me.”
As Paddack addressed reporters outside the visiting manager’s office, Baldelli walked past and applauded his starter. Before that, he invoked one of the great pitchers of modern times in assessing Paddack’s performance.
“It kind of reminded me, totally different types of pitchers, but the way Roy Halladay used to pitch in games that I remember being a part of,” Baldelli said. “You look up in the fifth inning and he’s got 58 pitches and it’s 45 strikes. … It was related to those types of starts. That’s what a great Chris Paddack looks like. He can have different types of good outings, but that’s a great outing.”
Even the run came on a good pitch. Paddack threw a first-pitch curveball down and out of the zone, and Raleigh just did what he has done again and again lately, hooking it inside the foul pole and over the fence in right for the game’s first run.
That was the only scoring through seven innings. Paddack struck out the first two batters of the eighth, and with the Twins trailing, it appeared he needed only one out for that elusive complete game. After J.P. Crawford doubled, pitching coach Pete Maki came to the mound to discuss the plan to attack Jorge Polanco.
Paddack admitted afterward that he expected to have to request to face Polanco. But instead, Maki made it clear he would get the chance, and the only question was how to attack him. Paddack induced a grounder to short, and his gem was finished.
The Twins rallied for a run against Andrés Muñoz in the top of the ninth, forcing a bottom half and “spoiling” the potential complete game. But nobody was complaining about that.
There was no doubt what Paddack, whose rotation spot was potentially in question early in the year, had accomplished. And it was equally clear that he had earned the opportunity.
“I think every starting pitcher wants to go long in the game,” said catcher Ryan Jeffers. “But I think it’s a responsibility you have to earn, a right that you have to earn. It’s not like, ‘Hey, he’s pitching well, you can just keep going.’ … I think he’s earned that. I think he’s done enough to earn the right to keep pitching like he has been. He’s really turned in some really good starts for us.”