Jake Odorizzi flirted with a no-hitter in his last start. The Minnesota Twins right-hander will be looking to follow that up with another sharp performance in Detroit on Tuesday night.
Odorizzi kept the powerful New York Yankees’ lineup off-balance last Wednesday. Greg Bird ended the no-hit bid with a run-scoring double with one out in the eighth.
“It’s been an up and down season,” he said in a TV interview afterward. “It’s good to have one of these outings mixed in there.”
Odorizzi (6-10, 4.41 ERA) will be pitching the second game of a three-game series against the Tigers.
If Odorizzi hadn’t given up a hit in the eighth, manager Paul Molitor would have been forced to make a difficult decision. Odorizzi came out after Bird’s hit, which was his 120th pitch of the evening.
“What’s the difference between 120 and 140 (pitches)? Not much,” Odorizzi said to MLB.com afterward. “You’re going to be sore the next day anyway. There’s not too many chances you get to do something that special. You’ll never know how many it would have taken, but I appreciate what Moli was willing to do for me in letting me go out there.”
Odorizzi’s outing was still his longest of the season. He’s faced the Tigers twice this season and came away with no-decisions after pitching five innings in both starts. He’s 2-1 with a 3.21 ERA in six career starts against them.
Left-hander Daniel Norris, Detroit’s scheduled starter on Tuesday, continues his quest for his first victory of the season. Norris (0-4, 6.14 ERA) has three losses and a no-decision in four appearances since returning from groin surgery that had sidelined him since late April.
Norris gave up five runs on eight hits to Houston in 4 2/3 innings during his last start on Wednesday.
All but one of those runs came in the fifth inning.
“I don’t know, I feel like I ran out of gas,” Norris said afterward. “You can feel it in your legs. But I have to be patient; that’s part of it. The fact that I am able to get tired in a big-league game right now, that’s a positive.”
Norris hasn’t pitched more than five innings this season.
“I like his stuff,” Tigers manager Ron Gardenhire said of Norris. “He just has to get more stretched out. He hasn’t pitched enough.”
In four career starts against the Twins, he’s 1-1 with a 4.29 ERA.
Twins third baseman Miguel Sano could return to the lineup on Tuesday. He’s been out since Sept. 4, when he suffered a left leg injury while colliding with Houston shortstop Carlos Correa.
“I know it’s hard for him, as it is for hopefully everybody, to feel the disconnect of not playing and wanting to be out there and contributing,” Molitor told MLB.com. “He’s been talking about trying to get ready here for a while, and we’re just trying to be as smart as we can.”
Minnesota won the first game of the series on Monday, 6-1. Left fielder Eddie Rosario homered in the first inning but later suffered a right quad injury and departed in the fourth. His status for the remainder of the series is questionable.
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