The Twins on Sunday avoided the four-game sweep at the hands of the Kansas City Royals by scoring nine runs on 18 hits, including four home runs.
Jorge Polanco had four hits, newcomer Johnny Field had four hits, and Field, Tyler Austin, Polanco and Max Kepler each hit a home run. Kepler hit his 19th to tie his career high in home runs. It would be great to see him hit more than 20 to end the season.
Kyle Gibson improved to 8-13, despite giving up 11 hits. Still, he struck out six over six-plus innings and didn’t walk a batter. Gibson has battled all season and he has a respectable 3.78 ERA to show for it.
Now it’s on to Detroit for a three-game series. The Twins will go with the “opener” format in Game 1 by having reliever Gabriel Moya start the game.
Extra innings…
-The Twins finished their season series with the Royals at 9-10.
-The final two weeks of the season are here. What would you like to see the Twins accomplish before it’s over? As I mentioned before, I’d like to see Kepler hit more than 20 home runs and the Twins avoid losing 90 games. The team is 68-81 with 13 games to go. I think they can do it. After the three-game series at Detroit, the Twins head to Oakland and then come home to play the Tigers and White Sox to wrap things up.
-It’s been a long season. Most of the free agents didn’t pan out, and the injury bug was especially bad, afflicting Ervin Santana, Miguel Sano, Byron Buxton, Jason Castro, Logan Morrison and Adalberto Mejia. Brian Dozier is gone and so is Eduardo Escobar. But there were bright spots, too, such as Eddie Rosario’s steady play, the arrival of Tyler Austin, center fielder Jake Cave and Internet sensation, Willians Astudillo, who is now hitting better than .300. Pitcher Jose Berrios has a chance to strike out 200 batters.
-The Twins also need a lot of work, but I’ll save that for a future post.