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Twins cap tough stretch with win in Toronto

betsy helfand, pioneer press
·4 min read

TORONTO — At long last, the Twins have reached their much-needed off day.

But instead of stumbling into it, as you could imagine a team whose depth has been stretched thin and was playing in its 18th game in 17 days might, the Twins finished the run with an 8-6 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays on Sunday afternoon at Rogers Centre.

They finished the 17 days by taking two of three games from a good Toronto team after dropping four of five games in Detroit, their offense silenced in the middle of that series.

“I felt so tired. I think my teammates (felt) the same,” Luis Arraez said, citing the doubleheader the team played in Detroit. “We just play hard and then come here. Another series and then we (won) the series, so that’s most important.”

Over the course of those 17 days, the Twins saw a number of players — Sonny Gray, Josh Winder and Royce Lewis among them — go down with injuries. Others — Carlos Correa, Joe Ryan and Gilberto Celestino, the last of whom has since returned — landed on the injured list after testing positive for COVID-19. Four more — Max Kepler, Emilio Pagán, Caleb Thielbar and Trevor Megill — were unable to travel with them to Toronto over the weekend because of their vaccination status.

“That was hard because when they don’t come to Canada, I said, ‘Oh my gosh, what are we going to do?’ ” Arraez said.

Turns out, the Twins (32-24) got contributions from up and down the lineup.

On Sunday, it was rookie shortstop Jermaine Palacios, who made a nice diving stop in the first inning to bail starter Devin Smeltzer out of a jam and start an important double play, and Arraez, who finished the day 4 for 4, and Gary Sánchez, whose hard contact all day finally paid off with a two-run home run in the eighth inning.

In the process, they tamed a red-hot Blue Jays (31-22) team that had won eight straight games before their arrival in Toronto. The Twins scored three runs in the first inning off starter Kevin Gausman, taking advantage of a pair of balls that evidently got lost in the sun. After consecutive hits from Arraez and Sánchez to begin the game, Jorge Polanco hit a routine fly ball straight to Teoscar Hernández in right field. The ball hit off his glove, allowing Arraez to score the first run.

Arraez is now hitting a league-leading .358 with a league-leading .447 on-base percentage, prompting his manager to say it was like “he’s on fire all the time.”

“That’s not normal,” manager Rocco Baldelli said.

Later in the inning, Jose Miranda hit a foul pop up that first baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr. appeared to lose in the sun. Guerrero fell down, and the ball landed nowhere near him. Given a second chance, Miranda turned the at-bat into an RBI single.

“Sometimes you’re the team that hits the ball in the sun and sometimes you’re not, but it doesn’t mean anything if we don’t take advantage of it, and we did,” Baldelli said.

In total, the Twins scored five runs (three earned) off Gausman in his 3 2/3 innings, knocking the all-star starter out early.

On the other side, Smeltzer gave up two runs in his four innings, helped out by Palacios after he ran into trouble in the first inning. Smeltzer surrendered a leadoff home run to George Springer and a solo shot to Alejandro Kirk in the fourth inning, but he pitched with the lead during the entirety of his outing.

Rookie Jhoan Duran was struck in the leg by a comebacker in the eighth but remained in the game for that frame. The Blue Jays then in the ninth chipped away at what had been a five-run lead off Tyler Duffey, thanks to a Santiago Espinal three-run home run.

But in a big moment, Jovani Moran came in and stepped out, recording the last out of the game and picking up his first career save.

“Some guys are just out there doing what they do, not changing nothing and not thinking anything differently than if you have a Correa out there or a (Byron Buxton) out there every day or anything like that,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “Playing today without one of the best players in the game playing center field, that doesn’t affect the mindset of our guys. We went out there and fought and fought hard and left here winning a really great series.”

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