Cleveland beat the White Sox 7-4 & Toronto beat the Yankees 11-5 so the #MNTwins are 1.5 games behind Chicago in the American League Central Division and 1.5 games ahead of New York for the 4th seed in the American League Playoffs.
Yesterday, it was Jose Berrios against Yu Darvish on National TV. Darvish was in the running for the National League Cy Young Award before last night’s game. Berrios appears to have righted the ship on his season. Since August 20th when he threw 6 innings on 1-hit, scoreless ball with 1 walk & struck out 9, he’s 3-0 with a 2.60 ERA & a 1.139 WHIP in 27.2 innings. He struck out 33 in those 5 games.
So how’d both pitchers do last night.
The Twins got a leadoff hit from Max Kepler, a single to RF. Josh Donaldson then walked to bring up Eddie Rosario and he hit a single off Cubs 1B Anthony Rizzo’s glove & into right field to score Kepler from 2nd. LaMonte Wade hit a 1-out single to load the bases but Darvish struck out both Polanco & Garver as he struck out the side to limit the damage to just the one run. Berrios allowed a 2-out single to Kris Bryant but got Kyle Schwarber to fly out to left field to end the inning. 1-0 Twins
Twins CF Jake Cave 3B’d (2) to left field to lead off the 2nd inning & Kepler hit a 1-out RBI-groundout to put another run on the board for the Twins. Berrios walked the leadoff batter in the bottom of the 2nd but got a groundout, a pop out and a lineout to end the 2nd. 2-0 Twins
Darvish set down the next 8 Twins batters in a row before giving up a Josh Donaldson 1-out single to LF in the top of the 5th. He worked around it, though. He also worked around 1-out Jorge Polanco double in the 6th. Berrios worked around a leadoff single & a 1-out single in the 3rd then worked around a leadoff Contreras double with some help from Donaldson, who threw out Contreras at home to keep the Cubs scoreless in the 4th. He then set down 6 straight to finish his outing, 6IP 4H 0R/ER 1BB 4K.
Darvish came out for the 7th but gave up a leadoff double to Marwin Gonzalez and Max Kepler took the very next pitch out to right field for his 8th HR of the season and the 100th HR of his career to put the Twins up 4-0.
RHP Trevor May pitched the 7th for the Twins and he needed just 15 pitches to strike out Heyward & Baez and get an inning-ending popout from Caratini. 4-0 Twins
LHP Taylor Rogers pitched the 8th for the Twins and he struck out PHer Jose Martinez then walked Ian Happ but struck out Anthony Rizzo and got Kris Bryan tt o line out to center to end the 8th.
Max Kepler added a double to left field to his night with 2 outs in the top of the 9th to show that he might be back to the Max we know & love. #MaximumImpact
RHP Sergio Romo pitched the 9th for the Twins. He struck out Maybin & Contreras but Contreras was able to reach first on a passed ball by Mitch Garver. Heyward was then hit by a pitch but Sergio got Baez to pop out before loading the bases by walking Caratini. He then struck out Nico Hoerner to end the game and send the Twins home for a day off before playing 2 against Detroit and 3 against Cincinnati.
There isn’t a Twins pitcher listed yet for tomorrow’s game against Detroit. We’ll be sure to update that when we see it. RHP Kenta Maeca is scheduled to pitch Game 2 on Wednesday against DET RHP Casey Mize, though.
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