Twins hold off Angels' rally
Byron Buxton and Jason Castro each hit two-run homers and right-hander Jake Odorizzi won his sixth consecutive start as the Minnesota Twins took the rubber game of a three-game series with the Los Angeles Angels with an 8-7 victory on Wednesday afternoon in Minneapolis.
Jorge Polanco went 2-for-4 with a triple, Ehire Adrianza went 2-for-3 with two RBIs and Jonathan Schoop also had two hits for Minnesota, which increased its American League Central Division lead to 4 1/2 games over idle Cleveland.
Odorizzi (6-2), who entered the contest with a streak of 20 shutout innings, gave up three runs on nine hits and two walks over 5 1/3 innings while striking out three. Mike Morin got Shohei Ohtani to ground out with the bases loaded to end the game for his second career save.
Brian Goodwin went 4-for-4 with two doubles and a sacrifice fly, and Tommy La Stella (4-for-5) and Jonathan Lucroy (2-for-4) both homered for Los Angeles -- which was playing the final game of an 11-game road trip that began against the Houston Astros in Monterrey, Mexico, and also included stops in Baltimore and Detroit.
Jared Walsh, making his major league debut, had three of the Angels' 18 hits.
Trevor Cahill (2-4) took the loss, allowing six runs on six hits and two walks over 4 1/3 innings. The right-hander struck out one.
Minnesota took a 2-0 lead in the second inning on a two-run double by Adrianza that drove in C.J. Cron, who reached base despite striking out when Cahill's pitch caromed into the Angels' dugout, and Schoop, who reached on an infield hit.
La Stella, who had 10 career home runs in five seasons entering the season, hit his 11th of the year in the third inning. The solo drive to right snapped Odorizzi's scoreless innings streak at 22.
The Twins extended their lead to 6-1 with four runs in the fifth inning on Buxton's two-run homer, an RBI double by Eddie Rosario -- driving in Polanco, who had tripled off the fence in left-center -- and a sacrifice fly by Willians Astudillo.
Los Angeles closed to within 6-3 in the sixth on Lucroy's sixth home run of the season, a 434-foot shot to center. But the Twins answered in the bottom half of the inning with a two-run homer by Castro to extend their lead to 8-3.
Goodwin's sacrifice fly in the seventh made it 8-4. Lucroy and David Fletcher added RBI hits in the ninth and Morin hit Mike Trout with the bases loaded cut it to 8-7. But Morin then rebounded to get Ohtani to ground to short to end the game.
--Field Level Media
