In poorly played game on both sides, Brewers didn't do enough to help themselves

MINNEAPOLIS - Neither team played well enough to deserve a victory Monday night at Target Field but the team with the most runs never really cares.

The Twins and Brewers took turns trying to lose the game but the visitors finally succeeded through generosity and sloppiness. You can't balk in the eventual winning run and feel good about it.

"I just flinched out there before I stepped off, I guess," said Brewers reliever Oliver Drake, whose seventh-inning balk allowed Eddie Rosario to trot home from third with the decisive run in Minnesota's 5-4 interleague victory. 

Rosario succeeded at doing what runners often try to do at third base in such situations - break down the line and distract the pitcher into balking. Rosario had a longer leash than usual coming down the line because the Brewers were in a defensive shift against left-handed hitting Jason Castro with no defender near the bag.

It appeared Castro had not yet stepped back into the batter's box when the balk was called but manager Craig Counsell, who argued long and hard with home plate umpire Bill Welke, said he was told the ball was in play.

"It's a situation we've been in before," Counsell said. "We shift quite a bit. The runner is going to play around there. But he's not going anywhere. If anything, we could have had a conversation with Oliver about it. Credit to them for bouncing around. That's the way it goes."

Drake had stepped off once as Rosario bluffed down the line but was called for the balk the second time it happened.

"I've got to be more composed out there and step off (without flinching)," Drake said. "He was jumping around the play before. If I make one pitch and get the guy out at the plate, it's a completely different story. Balking in the winning run really sucks."

With Minnesota fielding a lineup loaded with left-handed hitters and switch-hitters, Counsell's plan was to get as many innings as possible out of left-handed starter Brent Suter, then go to lefty reliever Josh Hader for multiple innings.

But Suter struggled so badly in the fourth, allowing four consecutive hitters to reach base during a two-run rally, Counsell decided to go to Hader in the fifth. But Hader walked three batters in the fifth and allowed the first two to reach base in the sixth, and that was it for him.

"You take a chance and go to the bullpen early, in a spot we want to get Josh in," Counsell said. "I thought it set up pretty good for him. He just had a rough night, throwing strikes. They made him work really hard; a lot of foul balls. 

"We ended up only getting an inning out of Josh. It was going to be a scramble at that point. That's the spot we got Josh here for, and he's been very successful in that role."

BOX SCORE: Twins 5, Brewers 4

RELATED:Late mistakes prove costly in loss to Twins

NOTES:Counsell doesn't believe bunting was the right strategy

MLB: Live scoreboard, box scores, standings, schedules

Counsell opted to win or lose with the right-handed Drake, whose heavy use of a split-finger fastball has given him reverse splits, with more success against left-handed hitters (.684 OPS coming in) than righties (1.086). But Drake walked switch-hitter Eduardo Escobar to open the seventh and lefty-hitting Rosario followed with a RBI double on a drive to right that went over Domingo Santana by a good margin after he initially broke in. 

"I thought the inning was set up pretty good for him with four out of five left-handed hitters coming up," Counsell said. "The walk to the leadoff hitter, to me, was the thing that really hurt.

"We don't have an unlimited supply of left-handed pitchers. You go for it when you've got a lead. We got a lead tonight, so you throw those guys out there."

As for Rosario's drive over Santana, Counsell said, "I'm not sure, where the ball landed, that he gets it (if he breaks back immediately). It was hit very hard. I don't think he would have caught it, either way. It was not right behind him."

It was the second consecutive shaky outing after a string of good ones for Suter, who is filling in for injured Chase Anderson. 

"You have to give them some credit. They hit some decent pitches and put some pressure on us," Suter said. "What I really feel bad about is that we had momentum. We had a 3-0 lead and a 4-1 lead. I just wasn't able to keep the momentum. I really feel like I let the team down in that aspect."

Things were looking up in the early going when the offense-starved Brewers scored three runs in the third and another in the fourth. But the Twins gifted two of the runs in the third with a pair of errors and the Brewers' hitters went quietly over the final five frames.

"I don't think we put together a big offensive night, necessarily," Counsell said. "We got some breaks to score those runs. But it was nice to take advantage of it."

On this night, the Brewers just didn't do enough to help themselves.