Minnesota native Matt Wallner homers in MLB debut; Twins lose to Cleveland
The Twins fell 5-1 to the Cleveland Guardians in the first game of Saturday's doubleheader. It's a killer loss for the Twins as they are now six games behind Cleveland for first place in the AL Central.
But as the Twins' playoff hopes are quickly dying, Matt Wallner's professional baseball career is just coming to life. Saturday was his major league debut and it'll be a memorable one as his first career hit was a solo home run off former Cy Young winner Shane Bieber in the eighth inning.
MATT WALLNER HOME RUN!!
— Bally Sports North (@BallySportsNOR) September 17, 2022
How about that for the Minnesota kid's first big-league hit? 🤩 #MNTwins pic.twitter.com/TOPa46CkAz
The 24-year-old from Forest Lake, who was Minnesota's Mr. Baseball winner as a senior at Forest Lake High School in 2016, was called up by the Twins when Max Kepler was placed on the injured list Saturday.
Wallner had been crushing the ball at Triple-A St. Paul, getting especially hot in September as 13 of his 18 hits were for extra bases: nine doubles, two triples and two homers. Between Double-A Wichita and Triple-A St. Paul this season, Wallner hit 27 homers and drove in 95 runs.
But as good as Wallner was, the Twins as a whole were bad.
Louie Varland, making his second career start, gave up four runs on nine hits in five innings. Bieber, meanwhile, dominated the Twins, holding them to four hits in eight innings. Emmanuel Clase needed just eight pitches to close the game in the ninth.
Game 2 of the doubleheader starts at 6:10 p.m.
Title: Bring Me The Sports co-owner, editor Email: joe@bringmethenews.com Twitter: @JoeBMTN Education: Southwest Minnesota State University Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota Expertise: All things Minnesota sports Nelson has covered Minnesota sports for two decades, starting his media career in sports radio. He worked at small market Minnesota stations in Marshall and St. Cloud before joining one of the nation's highest-rated sports stations, KFAN-FM 100.3 in the Twin Cities. There, he was the producer of the top-rated mid-morning sports show with Minnesota Vikings announcer Paul Allen. His radio experience helped blossom a career as a sports writer, joining Minneapolis-based Bring Me The News in 2011. Nelson and Adam Uren became co-owners of Bring Me The News in 2018 and have since more than tripled the site's traffic and launched Bring Me The Sports in cooperation with the Sports Illustrated/FanNation umbrella. Nelson has covered the Super Bowl and numerous training camps, NFL combines, the MLB All-Star Game and Minnesota playoff games, in addition to the day-to-day happenings on and off the field of play. Nelson also has extensive knowledge of non-sports subjects, including news and weather. He works closely with Bring Me The News meteorologist Sven Sundgaard to produce a bevy of weather and climate information for Minnesota readers. Nelson helped launch and manage the Bring Me The News Radio Network, which provided more than 50 radio stations around Minnesota with daily news, sports and weather reports from 2011-17.