August 29, 2019

Road warriors roll on, sink South Siders

Who says home is where the heart is?

That certainly doesn’t apply to the 2019 Minnesota Twins because away from Target Field they are a completely different team.

The Twins won again Wednesday — an 8-2 defeat of the Chicago White Sox — and are now 20 games over .500 on the road, compared to just 10 games north of .500 at home. They go for the sweep on Thursday.

Twins starter Jake Odorizzi benefited from an extra day of rest between starts and the Twins did what they usually do: hit home runs. They hit three long balls, including two from Jonathan Schoop, who is getting hot at the right time as the Twins continue to deal with injured players. Over the past week, Schoop is hitting .364 with four home runs. He now has 21 on the season. Mitch Garver also hit his 24th in Wednesday’s game.

That backed Odorizzi with eight runs and he pitched a quality start with eight strikeouts. He’s now 14-6 with a 3.55 ERA.

Kyle Gibson, Michael Pineda and Odorizzi have all shown recent improvement. Now, Jose Berrios needs to do the same on Thursday to continue the streak.

Extra innings…

-The Twins are 81-51.

-Despite the win, the Twins gained no ground on the Cleveland Indians because the Tribe won again, too. The terrible Detroit Tigers simply have no answer for the Indians, who improved to 14-1 over Gardy’s guys.

-Odd moment in Wednesday’s game when slugger Miguel Sano stepped out of the box to call time and yet appeared to do so too late. But rather than bail out, Sano quickly stepped back into the box and put the ball in play. It appeared to be a hit, but was later ruled an error on the White Sox shortstop. Still, Sano drove in a run.

COMMENTS

Hi, I’m Rolf Boone, Twins fan.

I became a fan of the Minnesota Twins after a friendly wager in the early 1980s. I survived Ron Davis, the meltdown in Cleveland, Phil Bradley at the Kingdome and then marveled at a rising generation of stars and two World Series wins in 1987 and 1991. Brad Radke made the 1990s bearable, while Kirby Puckett’s eye injury, exit from the game and eventual death made it almost too much to bear. The new century ushered in more talent — Joe Mauer, Johan Santana, Joe Nathan, Torii Hunter, Justin Morneau — and consecutive seasons of playoff baseball, followed by consecutive seasons of losing baseball. A winning season returned in 2015. So here we are. Go Twins.