MINNEAPOLIS -- The Giants have gotten into the habit of staging dramatic comebacks this season, but they found themselves on the wrong end of a late rally on Sunday afternoon at Target Field.
DaShawn Keirsey Jr. delivered a two-out RBI single off closer Ryan Walker to help the Twins complete a three-game sweep of the Giants with a 7-6 walk-off win in the bottom of the 10th inning on Mother’s Day.
The defeat sealed only the second sweep of the year for the Giants, who fell to 24-17 after going 2-4 on their six-game road trip through Chicago and Minnesota.
San Francisco briefly took a 6-5 lead in the top of the 10th after David Villar drove in automatic runner Jung Hoo Lee from third with a 62.5 mph groundout to the left side, but the Twins erased the deficit in the bottom half of the inning.
Brooks Lee led off with a single to put runners on the corners for Ryan Jeffers, who tied the game with an RBI groundout that deflected off third baseman Matt Chapman. After intentionally walking Willi Castro, Walker retired Royce Lewis before misplacing a sinker that Keirsey lined to left field for the game-winning hit.
“We took a lead -- first time we’ve had a lead here -- and felt pretty good about where we were going,” manager Bob Melvin said. “We had our back-end bullpen guys ready to go, and it just didn’t work out. We had some good at-bats. We had some bad at-bats. The game had a little bit of everything.”
Melvin wasn’t around to watch the end of the game, as he was tossed by first-base umpire Ramon De Jesus after disputing a checked-swing call that resulted in a called third strike against Christian Koss in the top of the ninth. The ejection served as an encapsulation of a frustrating weekend for the Giants, who were held to only two runs on seven hits over the first two games of the series.
San Francisco’s offense had a little more success against Twins right-hander Pablo López on Sunday. Heliot Ramos -- who felt he cost the Giants a win when he was picked off at third base in the eighth inning of Saturday night’s 2-1 loss -- appeared determined to redeem himself, driving in each of the club’s first three runs with a sacrifice fly in the first inning and a two-run shot to right-center field in the fourth. The 25-year-old also made a pair of diving catches in left field, which he felt was the result of some recent defensive adjustments.
“I’m trying to get better at my first step,” Ramos said. “That’s the main thing. Once I get going, I can run pretty good, but my first step will help me a lot to get to balls easier.”
Landen Roupp breezed through his first three innings, but he couldn’t deliver a shutdown inning in the bottom of the fourth, yielding a two-run homer to Brooks Lee that cut the Giants’ lead to 3-2.
Mike Yastrzemski helped the Giants manufacture another run in the fifth, when he singled, stole second, advanced to third on a balk and scored on a sacrifice fly. But Minnesota once again clawed back, getting a sacrifice fly from Byron Buxton in the fifth before scoring two more runs off left-hander Erik Miller to take their first lead of the afternoon.
Miller entered Sunday with a 0.73 ERA over his first 14 appearances of the year, but he faced four batters without recording an out in the sixth. He gave up a game-tying single to Lewis before leaving the bases loaded with no outs for Camilo Doval, who allowed the go-ahead run to score on Harrison Bader’s RBI forceout, which was hit too softly for the Giants to turn an inning-ending double play.
Doval came back to strike out Buxton swinging on a slider to limit the damage, giving San Francisco a chance to come back and tie the game on Ramos’ RBI single off Griffin Jax in the eighth.
Ramos went 2-for-2 with a career-high four RBIs and is now batting .419 (18-for-43) with seven extra-base hits over his past 13 games, but it wasn’t enough for the Giants, who will now head home and try to regroup before kicking off a three-game series against the division rival D-backs on Monday night at Oracle Park.
“We had a good series in Chicago, and a bad series here, unfortunately,” Melvin said. “It would have been nice to be able to pull this one out today, especially since we scored some runs. We weren’t scoring any runs this series. Sometimes baseball is a cruel game. Just a tough series for us. We have to go home and pick our heads up and play well at home like we have.”