Twins break out the bats, sweep Angels for seventh straight win
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 a11-5 win against the Los Angeles Angels, Minnesota finished a second-straight series sweep and is now over .500 at 14-13.
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.
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, the Twins 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. López, who saw his velocity dip a couple miles per hour in his last start, erased concerns about that by averaging 96.4 mph on his four-seam fastball. 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 within a run and ended the starter’s day.
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 Minnesota’s lead back to three runs.
The Twins 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.