Twins take advantage of two White Sox errors, win 2-1 in series opener
At this stage, the Twins will take a victory any way they can get one.
"Especially against a division rival like the White Sox," righthander Bailey Ober said. "These games are big games, and we need to keep it going, keep this momentum going then continue through this week."
Another night of offensive ineptitude had fans muted and the scoreboard flooded with scoreless innings until everything was turned inside out by an outbreak of defensive madness by the White Sox. The Twins scored two runs on an infield hit and two errors in the eighth to carve out a 2-1 victory in front of an announced crowd of 14,257 at Target Field.
The Twins have won consecutive games for the first time since April 9 and 10 against Seattle.
Things looked bleak in the eighth inning as Chicago reliever Kendall Graveman, handed a 1-0 lead, got the first two outs. But Ryan Jeffers — a late addition to the lineup when Gary Sanchez was scratched because of abdominal soreness — one-hopped a drive into the left-center stands for a ground-rule double.
Graveman's first pitch to Luis Arraez, the next batter, was wild, enabling Jeffers to advance to third. Arraez then walked to put runners on the corners.
Carlos Correa followed with a hard grounder into hole at shortstop that was grabbed by Tim Anderson, who then threw wildly to first base. Jeffers scored and Arraez headed to third. As the play continued, White Sox first baseman Jose Abreu then threw wildly to home plate, with the ball reaching the fence in front of the White Sox dugout. Graveman, who was backing up home, got to the ball but had no play as Arraez scored and Correa punched the air after sliding into second.
"We put the ball in play, we ran hard and, you know, at some point in the year, the plays are gonna end up turning for you at one point or another," Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. "And we needed it at that moment."
BOXSCORE: Twins 2, White Sox 1
It was just a matter of closing out the win at that point. The duty was given to Emilio Pagan, who promptly gave up a leadoff double in the ninth to Eloy Jimenez before issuing one-out walks to A.J. Pollack and Andrew Vaughn.
Pagan then stiffened, getting Reese McGuire to pop out to short. Pagan ran the count full to the next batter, Jake Berger. With no place to put him, Pagan fired a fastball that caught the bottom-inside corner of the plate for the final out.
Before that, it was quite an offensive onslaught by the Twins for the first five innings, during which they had three hits.
While the Twins starting pitching has been a pleasant surprise — the unit's 2.80 ERA entering play Friday was fifth-best in baseball — the offense has scored three or fewer runs in eight of its past 10 games. Ober was on point Friday, holding the White Sox to one run over five innings. That run came on an Andrew Vaughn home run in the fifth to give Chicago a 1-0 lead.
And it sure looked like the Twins offense was going to let them down again. Until the defense let Chicago down, sending the White Sox to their fifth consecutive loss.
"We had some things maybe go our way," Baldelli said, "but we also had to do some things to kind of force that action.
"You could probably point to a lot of guys that did a lot of little things today to give us this win."
