The Twins did it again on Saturday, beating the Chicago White Sox 6-2 to win the game, win the series and now they will go for the sweep of the sad-sack South Siders on Sunday. A win will make it 20 straight losses for the Pale Hose.
The Twins scored their six runs on eight hits, seven of which came from the bottom of the order. Ryan Jeffers hit his team-leading 16th dinger of the season, Willi Castro drove in two runs, rookie Austin Martin cracked two hits and rookie Brooks Lee had two as well and 2 RBI.
That was all in support of Bailey Ober who cruised, allowing just two runs over seven innings with seven strikeouts to improve to 11-5 with a 3.69 ERA. It was his eighth straight quality start, matching a streak set by former Twins Pitcher Phil Hughes, according to MLB.com.
Simeon Woods Richardson gets the ball Sunday.
Extra innings…
-Both the Royals and Guardians lost on Saturday, so with the win the Twins leapfrog the Royals into second place and pick up a game on the Guards in the AL Central. The Twins are 11-1 against the Sox, the Royals are 12-1 versus the South Siders, but incredibly the Guards are 5-5 against the Pale Hose. Go figure.
-Twins pitcher Hughes reeled off eight straight quality starts in 2014, arguably his best year as a pitcher. He went 16-10 with a 3.52 ERA and tossed 209-plus innings, but only issued 16 walks. He was an All-Star with the New York Yankees in 2010, but he earned Cy Young award votes pitching for the Twins in ’14.
-The soul-crushing 23-game losing streak that the Philadelphia Phillies had to endure in 1961 finally came to an end on Aug. 20 during the second game of a doubleheader against the Milwaukee Braves. The Phils won 7-4.
The Philadelphia Inquirer
“Two hundred never-say-die baseball fans gave the Phillies a rousing welcome home early Monday at International Airport, complete with band, cheers and placards proclaiming unflagging devotion.
“They hoisted Manager Gene Mauch onto their shoulders and staged an impromptu victory march through the airport. The reception stunned the youthful manager. When he recovered, he told the cheering crowd:
“One day we’ll come home after winning 23 out of 24, and they’ll have to build a new airport.”
“The reference was to the painful fact that until the second game of Sunday’s doubleheader in Milwaukee, the Phils had set a modern major league record of 23 consecutive defeats.”
Sources: MLB.com, Baseball-Reference.com, Newspapers.com