Wade Meckler walks it off as Angels outlast Twins in 10

The Angels and Twins played a game Wednesday night that had no business being that close for that long, and it took a walk-off single in the 10th to settle it. Los Angeles led for seven innings, watched it slip away late, and then needed one more twist to actually finish the job.

For most of the night this was Walbert Ureña's show. The 22-year-old rookie set a career high with 9 strikeouts over 7 scoreless innings, allowing just 4 hits and no walks while racking up a season-high 22 swings and misses. His changeup was the whole story — 11 whiffs on 15 changeups thrown, filthy enough that Rob Friedman was posting a new clip of it every half inning.

Rob Friedman

@PitchingNinja

Walbert Ureña's changeup is soooo good. 11 whiffs on 15 changeups so far.

That kind of dominance has been the norm, not the exception, for Ureña this season. He's carried a sub-3.00 ERA deep into his rookie year and built one of the best changeups in baseball by run value, the rare Angels building block in a stretch where the roster hasn't given fans much else to hang onto. Backed by RBI singles from fellow rookies Moisés Ballesteros and Denzer Guzman, the Angels had built a 3-0 cushion behind him before the bullpen ever got involved.

Then Walker Jenkins happened. The Twins rookie entered the ninth with a.089 batting average and a 1-for-33 slump barely in his rearview, but he turned on a 101 mph Ben Joyce fastball — the second-fastest pitch any Twins hitter has ever taken deep — for a two-out, two-run homer that tied it at 3. It was his first career homer off an actual major league pitcher, and his third hit of the night.

"I'm going to tell you right now, I'm not going to keep hitting.100 for the rest of my career. I'm going to figure it out," Jenkins said afterward, a line that reads a lot better after a night like that one.

The Twins weren't done pushing, either. Minnesota grabbed a 4-3 lead in the 10th on an RBI single from Brooks Lee, putting Los Angeles in a hole with the tying run nowhere in sight. But Zach Neto worked a walk and Mike Trout — after successfully challenging a called third strike to stay alive — lined an RBI single to tie it right back up at 4, with Neto motoring from first to third on the play.

Wade Meckler made sure that comeback didn't go to waste. On the very first pitch he saw from Twins lefty Kody Funderburk, Meckler lined a single through a drawn-in infield to score the winning run, his first career walk-off hit and a 5-4 final for the Angels.

Foul Territory

@FoulTerritoryTV

And Wade Meckler wins it!