Oakland Athletics at Minnesota Twins: Final Score & Recap

The Oakland Athletics knocked off the Minnesota Twins 2-1 at Target Field on September 28, 2023, overcoming a pre-game DiamondIQ model estimate of just 25 percent to hand the Twins a loss in front of their home crowd. Oakland scored its two runs in the second and eighth innings, while Minnesota managed its lone run in the sixth, and both clubs finished with four hits and no errors in a tightly contested affair.

The decisive blow came in the top of the eighth inning, when Ryan Noda hit a home run off Kenta Maeda that shifted win probability by 18.7 percent in Oakland's favor, giving the Athletics what proved to be the winning margin. Minnesota had pulled within one in the bottom of the sixth when Alex Kirilloff reached on a hit by pitch off Luis Medina, a sequence that swung win probability 13.5 percent toward the Twins, but Oakland's bullpen held firm from there. Dany Jiménez stranded any threat in the eighth when he induced a groundout from Trevor Larnach, a play that flipped 18.7 percent of win probability back to the Athletics, and Lucas Erceg followed by striking out Donovan Solano in the seventh for an 11.6 percent swing in Oakland's direction.

Trevor May and the Oakland relievers combined to protect the lead into the ninth, and the game's single largest win-probability event came on Edouard Julien's pop out to close the bottom of the ninth, a 31.6 percent swing that sealed the result. By WPA, Julien was actually Minnesota's top-impact batter at plus 28.6 percent on the night despite the final out, reflecting how close the DiamondIQ model considered the game entering that inning. Luis Medina led all pitchers with a plus 30.9 percent WPA contribution, and Dany Jiménez added 23.3 percent, as Oakland's relievers collectively turned a game the model had given the home side a 75 percent chance of winning into a road victory.