The Twins go for their second straight sweep on Wednesday after a 5-4 win over the Detroit Tigers on Monday and a 2-0 win on Tuesday.
Gio Urshela drove in the first run, Carlos Correa the next and starter Sonny Gray and two relievers did the rest, blanking Motown on five hits. Gray was certainly the big cheese because he scattered four hits over seven innings with a walk and 10 strikeouts. He’s now 2-1 with a 2.60 earned run average.
Dylan Bundy gets the ball on Wednesday.
Extra innings…
-The Twins are 27-16 and lead the AL Central by 5.5 games after the Chicago White Sox lost badly to Boston, 16-3.
-Maybe we had better start calling Urshela, Mr. Clutch. He singled to score the go-ahead run in the 7-6 win over the Kansas City Royals, he had the game-winning hit on Monday and he had three more hits on Tuesday.
-Byron Buxton has cooled off at the plate, but he still remains one of the best fielders in the game after he made a diving catch to record an out in the fourth inning. You can add it to an impressive list of amazing catches.
-Struggling Jose Miranda had two hits in Tuesday’s game, which is good to see.
-On May 24, 1967 the Twins lost 14-1 to the Chicago White Sox and light-hitting Tommy McCraw, who hit three home runs that day. Despite the three blasts and eight RBI, McCraw finished the season with 11 home runs. Of note for the Twins: Bob Allison recorded his 1,000th hit to score the only run in the game for Minnesota.
The White Sox were a red-hot 22-11 after that win while the Twins were two games under .500 at 16-18. However, the Twins would flip the script and win 91 games that season, good enough for second place in the American League. The South Siders would slump to fourth. The Boston Red Sox won the pennant after they beat the Twins during the final two games of the season to clinch the AL flag by one game.
“We gave it our best shot,” said Twins Manager Cal Ermer to the Minneapolis Tribune after the last game of the season, a 5-3 loss. “It just wasn’t good enough.”
Sources: MLB.com, Baseball-Reference.com, Newspapers.com