Advertisement

Twins break out the bats, sweep Angels for seventh straight win

betsy helfand, pioneer press
·3 min read

ANAHEIM, Calif. — For the first three innings of Sunday’s game, the Twins’ offense was held quiet. While that might have been a cause for concern earlier this season, these days, it’s impossible to keep Minnesota down for too long.

The suddenly surging Twins offense broke out in the middle innings of Sunday’s game on the way to the team’s major league-leading seventh straight win. With a 11-5 win against the Los Angeles Angels at Angel Stadium, Minnesota finished a second-straight series sweep and is now over .500 at 14-13.

“We’re seeing the ball better. You can just see it,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “We are definitely seeing and making better decisions at the plate recently and it’s not one or two guys, it’s really basically the whole lineup right now. We’re making the opposition have to earn it every day at this point.”

For the second straight day, the Twins scored double-digit runs and collected 17 hits. Four different players — Ryan Jeffers, Jose Miranda, Christian Vázquez and Willi Castro — finished with three hits apiece.

Over the course of their winning streak, the Twins have recorded at least 10 hits in each game. The last time they did so in seven straight games was in 2006, nearly two decades ago.

“The whole team looks pretty good,” Miranda said. “We’re grinding every game. It’s good when you see everyone clicking.”

Miranda, who hit a pair of doubles, drove in the Twins’ first run of the day in the fourth inning, bringing home Byron Buxton, who reached on an Angels’ error, one of three on the day for Los Angeles.

An inning later, Minnesota broke through against Angels starter Reid Detmers when rookie Austin Martin capped off a seven-pitch at-bat that saw him go from down 0-2 to working the count full before singling in two runs. Two more runs scored in the inning, giving the Twins a healthy cushion.

It was needed because things came crashing down around Twins starter Pablo López shortly after. López, who saw his velocity dip a couple miles per hour in his last start, erased concerns about that, averaging 94.9 mph on his four-seam fastball and looking sharp early. He struck out six of the first nine batters he faced and retired 14 straight before he ran into trouble.

With two outs in the fifth, a Logan O’Hoppe double marked the first Angels baserunner of the day against López. Jo Adell followed with a double of his own and the next two batters, Luis Rengifo and Nolan Schanuel, homered. The laborious inning brought the Angels (10-18) back to within a run and ended the starter’s day.

“Pretty good for 14 outs and sucked for one,” López said. “I feel like I was better at some of the bad things that had been going on the last couple starts, falling behind a lot. I think I did get better when it came to that. Now it’s just a matter of how to avoid those crooked numbers.”

Though the game became close briefly, Minnesota was able to tack on late. The Twins were 1 for 19 on the season with the bases loaded before Alex Kirilloff’s pinch-hit, ground-rule double in the seventh inning broke things open once more, pushing the Twins’ lead back to three runs.

They added another pair of runs in the seventh and two more in the eighth to put the game out of reach and send them back to the Midwest as winners of seven straight.

“The vibes in the clubhouse are great,” López said. “The guys are putting together amazing at-bat after one at-bat. The hitting has been contagious. They want to do it for the guy that is coming behind him. … It’s great momentum that we have going.”

Related Articles