Well, call it what it is: a two-game winning streak and a series win for the Twins over the Philadelphia Phillies.
This one belonged to the pitching staff. Starter Sonny Gray pitched six scoreless innings with three walks and seven strikeouts, then a relief corps of Griffin Jax, Caleb Thielbar, Emilio Pagan and Jhoan Duran allowed only three hits the rest of the way. Duran closed it out to pick up his 21st save of the season.
On the offensive side of things, the Twins did just enough to score three runs. “Donnie Barrels” Solano, back in the lineup after tweaking his knee, had three hits at the top of the order, Jorge Polanco had two hits and drove in two more and master impersonator Jordan Luplow hit a solo home run.
The Twins are off Monday, then return to action Tuesday against the Detroit Tigers. Bailey Ober gets the ball.
Extra innings …
-Sonny Gray improved to 6-5 with a 3.04 ERA.
-On Aug. 13, 1969, the Twins knocked off the New York Yankees 5-2 at the Stadium as Rich Reese had a 4-for-4 day with two home runs.
The Minneapolis Tribune lede:
“Frail Tom Hall went pitch for pitch with formidable Mel Stottlemyre in Yankee Stadium Wednesday and beat his distinguished opponent 5-2 before 15,453 paying fans.”
(Interesting that the Tribune did not lead with Reese and then talks up Stottlemyre over the Twins’ Hall).
The New York Daily News lede:
“Mel Stottlemyre ran up against a hot hand at the Stadium yesterday and the Yankee ace was beaten 5-2 by the Twins. Rich Reese, their part-time first baseman, had a perfect day, four-for-four with two homers and three RBI.”
Advantage: New York Daily News.
Some photos of our trip so far:
The last photo is of the Can Can Wonderland in St. Paul. My son wanted to play mini-golf, so we searched for locations in the area and decided on this one. It was the right decision because this entertainment destination, buried deep in a warehouse, features not only mini-golf but plenty of vintage video games and pinball machines. The real kicker is that adults can take advantage of self-serve craft beer and cider on tap. Get a group of your buddies together to play games and drink beer and you could really get into trouble. Such as it was, I had two IPAs and played game after game of skee ball, foosball and air hockey with my son. It was a lot of fun. Unfortunately, there was a three-hour wait to play golf. We will come again.