The White Sox won a series over the Twins last week and now the Twins have done the same this week, winning the first two of three games against the Munetaka Murakami-less South Siders with a chance to earn the sweep on Wednesday.
It also was redemption for Twins starting pitcher Connor Prielipp who previously got knocked around by those Sox at Rate Field.
On Tuesday, though, Prielipp picked up his second win of the season. He just missed making a quality start, but he still went six innings with four runs allowed, two walks and seven strikeouts in the 6-4 win. He has the stuff to miss bats, fortunately.
He had to battle back from a three-run deficit, however. The lineup took it from there, though, by responding with six unanswered runs. Reliever Andrew Morris inherited a runner who came around to score, but Anthony Banda and Yoendrys Gomez closed out the game, with Gomez earning his fourth save.
And it wasn’t the heart of the order that supplied the offense, but the bottom as Luke Keaschall, Tristan Gray and backup catcher Alex Jackson had six of the Twins’ 10 hits and five of the team’s six RBI.
Taj Bradley gets the ball Wednesday.
-Extra innings…
–The Twins have a chance to sweep the Pale Hose and the Kansas City Royals this weekend, which would really help this team get back on track after a five-game skid to end a 10-game road trip.
They’re not out of the woods just yet though because the team is still dealing with a number of injuries, including pitchers Bailey Ober and Kendry Rojas, both of whom have landed on the 15-day injured list.
–White Sox slugger Murakami is also on the injured list with a pulled hamstring that is expected to keep him off the field for four to six weeks.
–Backup catcher Jackson completed the full-meal-deal on Tuesday with two hits, an RBI, a strikeout, two errors and he dealt with two wild pitches.
–Royce Lewis watch: The former struggling third baseman is struggling no more as he has hit seven home runs in 10 games since being sent down to Triple-A St. Paul.
–The Twins won Monday’s game 9-6. Gray hit his second grand slam of the season and ace Joe Ryan fanned nine across six innings to improve to 4-3 with a 3.20 ERA. Ryan leads the team in ERA, innings pitched and strikeouts.
–More help in the bullpen: The Twins need that shut down arm in the ‘pen and they may have just found it by trading to get Justin Lawrence from the Bucs in exchange for cash considerations, MLB.com reports.
More from MLB.com:
Lawrence, 31, is a hard thrower with a classic reliever’s arsenal: two fastballs that both average over 95 miles per hour, and a swing-and-miss sweeper. He joins a bullpen that is mostly short on power arms, though the recent addition of Yoendrys Gómez has begun changing that.