Starter David Festa continues to progress, but Twins fall to Rays

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — The Twins’ chances to get where they want to go rest largely on a rotation now filled with three rookies.
So if there’s something positive to take from Tuesday night’s 2-1 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays at Tropicana Field, it’s the fact that rookie David Festa, the Twins’ top pitching prospect, has showed continuous improvement. Festa went five innings on Tuesday, struck out seven and gave up just two earned runs.
“I thought I did a good job,” Festa said. “I’m really happy with how I seemed to pitch with runners on base. It seemed like every inning, maybe four out of the five, the leadoff guy got on. I thought I did a pretty good job of keeping my composure and not letting it snowball.”
Letting things snowball was an issue during his first stint in the majors with a four- and five-run inning mixed into his first two starts. But since returning to the big leagues in early July, he has a 3.13 earned-run average and has struck out 50 batters in 37 1/3 innings.
Tuesday, the two runs he gave up both came in the fourth inning, the first scoring on a ball hit towards Austin Martin in left field that he seemed to get a late jump on and missed when he made an effort to grab it. The second run scored a couple of batters later when a ball deflected by first baseman Carlos Santana wound up in the outfield.
“It was kind of a little bit of a Tropicana Field type of inning with some interesting balls off the bat,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “Those are plays that we need to make, and we know that. Not that they’re tricky plays or not that they’re not somewhat difficult. But deep down, I think everyone expects to make all those plays, and if we do, maybe we don’t give up any runs and we win 1-0.”
On some nights, that kind of performance might have been enough.
Not on Tuesday.
On Tuesday, Festa had limited run support as the Twins’ offense mustered just four hits through the first eight innings off starter Jeffrey Springs and reliever Drew Rasmussen. They finished with six hits total.
“He kept us in a game to keep us close to score some runs, and we didn’t do that for him,” catcher Ryan Jeffers said.
One of the hits was an infield single from Michael Helman, the first hit of the rookie’s career. Helman made his debut on Tuesday after spending the past two days watching from the bench.
“It was everything I could have dreamed of,” Helman said. “It was something special.”
If only the rest of the game were.
Two of the Twins’ other hits were from Santana, who hit his 19th home run of the season in the second inning and led off the ninth with a single.
That single was the Twins’ first hit since the fifth inning and began a ninth-inning rally that saw them put two runners on base with no outs. But they were unable to advance either runner with Brooks Lee and Willi Castro striking out and pinch hitter Christian Vázquez grounding out to end the game.
“Ultimately we had our chances, and the few chances that we had, we needed to take advantage of,” Baldelli said.