CHICAGO – These Chicago White Sox can be classified this year more as nettlesome pests than rivals, at least for the Twins, an exercise in problem management. The teams' games, while frequently dramatic and adversarial in the extreme, somehow still have the inevitability of game-speed back-field practice.
The Twins will do it till they get it right, in other words.
Case in point, Monday night's matchup, in which the Twins surrendered a lead or a tie three times, endured one of the most erratic innings of their season to donate a couple of runs to Chicago, only to roll their eyes and rally with sheer power when they needed it. The result was an 8-6, 11-inning victory at Guaranteed Rate Field, the Twins' eighth in eight meetings this year.
"We'd do two positive things that were, like, fantastic. And then we'd do something not so good," Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said after his team won its 52nd game, exactly twice as many as the last-place White Sox's 26. "We were on our toes and ready. Doesn't mean we did everything right, but we were ready to play when we needed to."
Byron Buxton and Brooks Lee, who had five hits between them, each singled in the 11th inning, the latter driving in courtesy runner Max Kepler with the tiebreaking run. Buxton scored on Manuel Margot's groundout, giving the Twins, who piled up 15 hits, eight of them for extra bases, the cushion they needed to finally subdue the feisty Sox.
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BOXSCORE: Twins 8, Chicago White Sox 6 (11 innings)
Chris Paddack did a lot of the subduing, returning to the Twins' rotation after two weeks on the injured list with five strong inning. Paddack hit 95 mph with his fastball and gave up only three hits and two runs.
"Honestly, it was a quick 15 days. But I felt great getting back out there, doing what I love," the righthander said. "There were some two-strike counts where I could have maybe expanded a little bit more. But we got some weak contact. I thought we did a good job attacking that lineup."
At times, the Twins allowed that lineup to attack them, in a way, especially during an erratic sixth inning while the score was still tied.
First, reliever Steven Okert plunked .197-hitting Andrew Benintendi with a sinker, a problem made worse when Andrew Vaughn cracked a double to the center-field fence. Okert recovered to strike out pinch hitter Luis Robert Jr. but then made way for righthander Josh Staumont.
Eloy Jiménez welcomed him by slicing a looper into center field, driving Benintendi home with the go-ahead run. After Paul DeJong struck out, Nicky Lopez pounded a shoe-high slider into the dirt in front of home plate. But the seemingly harmless chopper bounced so high toward right field, first baseman Jose Miranda couldn't reach it, and Vaughn scored on the odd single.
Then Lopez, 3-for-8 on steals this season, took off for second base, which must have caught the Twins by surprise. Ryan Jeffers popped up and threw to second base — where nobody was standing. Willi Castro rushed into shallow center field, corralled the ball, and threw it home in hopes of throwing out Jiménez.
But the throw hit the pitcher's mound and bounced into the air, allowing the run to score. And when Jeffers bobbled the ball, Lopez took third base.
"RJ made a great throw. It was as good of a throw as he could make, and if someone's there, if an infielder's there to catch the ball, I think Lopez is probably out," Baldelli said. "But it wasn't to be had, and we had to find other ways to win the game."
They did, first by responding right away with overwhelming force. Buxton doubled, Lee singled and Matt Wallner hit a 391-foot home run, his first since April 13, to tie the game.
"I feel good again. I have for the past six weeks, so just kind of building up on that and the confidence," said Wallner, who also blasted a double, 111.2 mph off his bat, in the third inning. "It took me a while, but I feel like I'm finally in a good spot again."
Moments later, Carlos Correa lifted a 3-2 fastball into the White Sox's bullpen, giving the Twins a 6-5 lead.
It didn't last. Griffin Jax walked Robert to open the eighth, and a stolen base and wild pitch put him on third base. With two outs, Lopez — yep, him again — reached out for a 3-2 sweeper and lifted it just over Lee's glove and the edge of the infield, allowing Robert to tie the score again.
"Maybe if I was 20 pounds lighter, I would have gotten there," Lee joked of the fluky play. "I almost had a little doinker over his head, too, but he got me today."
The White Sox didn't score again, though, when the Twins' bullpen stiffened. Jhoan Duran pitched a scoreless 10th, Kody Funderburk earned his first career save with a 1-2-3 11th, and the Twins preserved their five-game winning streak in Chicago.