When the Twins tore apart their roster at the trade deadline while the White Sox executed a controlled burn, it seemed like even if the teams didn't trade places in the standings, they traded it in vibes.
After the White Sox swept the Twins at Target Field this week, all in varying flavors of comeback fashion, you can't rule out a rearrangement of the AL Central cellar. There are still 10 games to close, but even if the Sox can't climb out of last place, they still have their first-ever four-game sweep in Minnesota to show for it.
Colson Montgomery's plate appearance in the ninth inning more or less summed up the situation. On a 2-0 pitch, he put forth one of the worst swings of the season, flailing over a sweeper that hit him in the leg.
Three pitches later, bedraggled Twins reliever Noah Davis grooved a 2-2 fastball to Montgomery, and Montgomery deposited it well into Target Field's upper deck, some estimated 454 feet away from home plate. That gave the Sox a little more breathing room in a game that already featured couple of big shifts, so a third couldn't be counted out.
The White Sox trailed this one 7-4 heading into the seventh, but they sent nine batters to the plate, and five of them crossed it.
Three of them did so on the game's biggest swing. Kyle Teel came to the plate with runners on the corners after Michael A. Taylor and Edgar Quero started the frame with singles off Travis Adams. Teel then worked a 3-1 count, and when Adams came at him with a cutter thigh-high on the inner third, Teel spun and unloaded, sending it over the right field wall for a game-tying blast.
And yet the White Sox had more in the tank, or at least were willing to let the Twins fill it. Lenyn Sosa got plunked, and when Génesis Cabrera replaced Adams, he drilled Montgomery on the hand. Sosa scored on a pair of productive flyouts, with Montgomery taking second on a rainbow throw home. That 90 feet counted, because he was able to make it to third when Luke Keaschall boxed Chase Meidroth's grounder up the middle to extend the inning, and then he scored on what should've been an inning-ending Brooks Baldwin flyout, because Cabrera balked by not coming to a set.
For his part, Will Venable made two moves that paid off. One was before the game, when he slotted two catchers at the top of the order. Both went 3-for-5, with Quero doubling and scoring two runs, and Teel scoring three runs while driving in four, including the three-run bomb.
The other came in the fourth inning, when he pivoted off the plan for Jonathan Cannon to pick up bulk innings after Fraser Ellard opened. They combined for three scoreless to start, and when Cannon issued two one-out walks followed by three consecutive run-scoring singles, Venable could've treated it either as bad luck, or a character-building moment for Cannon, who was recalled from Triple-A to make this appearance.
Instead, Venable went to Tyler Alexander. The move didn't exactly work, as he gave up a go-ahead two-run single to Mickey Gaspar that put the Twins ahead 5-3, then single runs in the fifth and sixth, but it did signal an investment in the outcome, rather than taking three wins at Target Field for granted. Wikelman González finally gave Venable the guy who stabilized the game, and for his 1 ⅓ scoreless innings that got the game through seven, he was rewarded with his first major league win.
Notes:
*Baldwin had a tough night at the plate by going 0-for-5 with two strikeouts, but he recovered from a tough night in right field on Wednesday with a diving catch that took a potential fifth hit away from Keaschall.
*Chase Meidroth went 4-for-5 ahead of him.
*Quero opened the game by getting cut down at second trying to stretch a bloop single into a double, so perhaps the leadoff role went to his head a little.
*Sosa appeared to be hit by a pitch earlier in the game, but it was initially ruled to glance off the knob of his bat, and a replay couldn't convince New York. Ryan Jeffers ended up getting the worst of it, as the carom caught him on the side of the helmet, and he had to leave the game.
*Home plate umpire Willie Traynor actually called two balks in this game, as Alexander stepped way too far toward home on an awkward pickoff attempt.
*The start of this game was delayed 90 minutes by rain, and then lasted 3 hours and 26 minutes afterward for the longest nine-inning game of the year.
