That the Twins were in a position late to possibly win Wednesday night’s game is a testament to Bailey Ober and the team’s bullpen, which bent but did not break over the first nine innings of the game.

Ten innings in, the fact that the Twins were unable to get a hit at the right moment caught up to them. Shea Langeliers hit a two-run home run off reliever Génesis Cabrera in the 10th inning on Wednesday night, helping lift the Athletics to a 4-2 win over the Twins at Target Field. The Twins would not respond, stranding their automatic runner, Austin Martin, on third.

“We gave ourselves chances,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “We had chances the whole game.”

That they did.

They had a prime opportunity in the third when they got consecutive hits from James Outman and Ryan Fitzgerald to begin the frame, putting both in scoring position with no outs. Neither scored. Outman was thrown out at the plate on the contact play and, immediately after, Trevor Larnach bounced into an inning-ending double play.

An inning later, the Twins could not bring home Luke Keaschall, who stole third with just one out. In the fifth, the inning the Twins scored a pair of runs on RBI knocks from Larnach and Brooks Lee. Lee was easily thrown out trying to take third after a pitch got past Langeliers, the A’s catcher.

In the eighth, Lee and Luke Keaschall began the inning with back-to-back singles but did not advance and in the ninth, the Twins left Fitzgerald on third.

But their pitching held strong for most of the night, limiting the Athletics (58-70) and keeping the Twins (58-68) in the game.

Ober, who was dealing with some back tightness, left well before the game was decided, but turned in another strong outing, another step forward as he leaves a tough middle-of-the-summer behind. Though his velocity was down — he averaged 89.3 miles per hour on his four-seam fastball — Ober still got 18 swing and misses on the night and was reasonably effective in his 5 2/3-inning start.

“(I) obviously wasn’t feeling the most explosive out there, but I feel like my release point was locked in even though I wasn’t feeling great,” Ober said. “I was able to manipulate the ball and put it where I wanted to.”

Ober, for the most part, cruised through the Athletics lineup, the only point of pain being when Tyler Soderstrom stepped in the batter’s box. Soderstrom extended his hitting streak to 18 games in the second inning, doubling to lead off the inning. He came around to score on a sacrifice fly. He later tagged Ober for a solo homer in the fourth inning. Ober was removed in the sixth inning before getting a chance to face him again.

The starter gave up just three hits in the game while striking out seven. After him, Kody Funderburk, Cole Sands, Justin Topa and Brooks Kriske before the Athletics finally got to Cabrera in the 10th.

“Today was just one of the days where we were not able to get that hit. It was a game where we pitched well. it was a game that the bullpen came in after Bailey, and we were able to match up for a while and hold a pretty good offense down,” Baldelli said. “We just needed to push a run across the plate at some point in the second half of the game and we weren’t able to do so which obviously is disappointing, but that’s probably just the tale of the game.”

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