The other night, the heart of the Twins’ batting order powered the club to a win. On Tuesday, the top of the order delivered the goods, collecting eight of the team’s 10 hits. Max Kepler, Jorge Polanco, Marwin Gonzalez and Eddie Rosario each had two hits apiece.
The night belonged to Gonzalez, however, who doubled and homered and drove in three runs to beat the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim 8-3. The Halos took a 3-0 lead, then the Twins rallied for eight runs from the sixth inning on.
It’s amazing how versatile this club has become. Twins manager Rocco Baldelli has used several different lineups this season and rarely have any of those moves fallen flat. On Tuesday, his lineup did not include either Miguel Sano or Willians Astudillo. It also hasn’t included Nelson Cruz or Mitch Garver because both are hurt. No matter, the Twins still find a way to win.
Martin Perez, who is looking for win No. 7 on this young season, gets the ball on Thursday.
Extra innings…
-Twins/Angels baseball was supposed to be played on Wednesday, but the topsy-turvy world of current climate conditions now means that it rains all the time in Southern California, apparently. The field was declared unplayable on Wednesday, so the game was postponed to Thursday.
-Rookie Luis Arraez also had two hits on Tuesday, including his first big league home run. Since joining the Twins, the 22-year-old is hitting .583.
-Michael Pineda gave the Twins a quality start and improved to 4-3 on Tuesday. He gave up three quick runs, but later settled down to pitch six innings. Four relievers pitched scoreless baseball the rest of the way.
-I came across a great tweet this week. Longtime baseball scribe, Peter Gammons, tweeted that when he was 12 he wrote a letter to Gene Mauch, a player with the Boston Red Sox in those days. Talk about a different time: Gammons said that Mauch replied to his letter with a three-page letter of his own!
When I was 12 and Gene Mauch played for the Red Sox, I wrote him a letter. He wrote me back–three pages. Later he became one of the most significant influences in my baseball life. https://t.co/MEG8nBOb8F
— Peter Gammons (@pgammo) May 20, 2019
-Lest we forget, Mauch, perhaps best known for managing the Philadelphia Phillies in the 1960s, later managed the Twins for five seasons in the late 1970s. In 1976, his first year on the job, the Twins finished in third place at 85-77. The Twins made the AL West race interesting, however, because they went 21-8 down the stretch and finished only five games out of first place.