MINNEAPOLIS -- When Will Venable said Tuesday night '"I don't want to say 'running on fumes,'" it was understood that he wanted to hold off because it doesn't send the right message, not because it's inaccurate.
But on the road, at the end of a stretch of 13 consecutive games without an off day, where quality of play seemed to be waning, and the prevalence of blue-gray knee wraps in the clubhouse doesn't seem to be a statement of solidarity with Kyle Teel, the Sox manager simply asked for one more push before a welcome break.
Crooked numbers early and late kept the Sox in control throughout, but a whopping 22 baserunners applied pressure constantly, and a Twins offense that just bloodied Davis Martin for the first time all season never mounted a rebuttal.
"Definitely," Sam Antonacci said of whether the off day is welcome, after reaching base six times. "Especially getting hang out with these friends, continue to have a life outside of baseball. But also take care of your body before the upcoming series in Philadelphia."
There's a lot more that goes into pitching than game situation, but Erick Fedde entered with a 4-0 lead and pitched like it. Showing an early feel for locating his sinker and sweeper in the zone and running with it, he threw first-pitch strikes to 15 of the exactly 18 hitters Venable allowed him to face. And in a welcome cameo for the existence of baseball karma, he was rewarded for coming out swinging.
"The sinker was really good today, and something I was searching for, for the last month and went through a few grip changes," Fedde said. "It's a small variation [of his old sinker grip. Pitching coach Zach] Bove was showing me a pitch that [Seth] Lugo throws and went with a small variation of it. Almost like if you took mine and his and morphed it into one. Shoutout to Bove."
The contact grew louder after the second, but all eight of the batted balls Fedde allowed at 90 mph found glove, including a sparkling running catch by Rikuu Nishida on a Brooks Lee liner in the right field corner in the fourth. A pair of soft two-out singles in the fifth from Luke Keaschall and Tristan Gray broke up any simmering no-hitter notions, and also gave Venable license to turn the game over to Grant Taylor before Fedde even got a whiff of the third time through the order.
Not having pitched since Saturday, Taylor was the rare rested man in a Sox uniform and knifed through the top of the Twins order in his usual fashion. By the time he handed the baton to Chris Murphy after striking out three in two scoreless innings, Andrew Benintendi had followed a Miguel Vargas RBI single with a no-doubter to right off Cody Lawyerson to wrap the scoring.
Twins starter Taj Bradley has been somewhere between good and excellent for the majority of his first full season with his new team, but sometime early into his 28-pitch first inning, his 11.57 ERA in three second half starts against the White Sox last season started to feel like the more relevant data point.
He allowed five of the first six Sox hitters on getaway day to reach. And when Colson Montgomery getting blown away on three pitches threatened to waste a bases-loaded, nobody out jam, Chase Meidroth worked an eight-pitch walk to push a run across, before Jacob Gonzalez collected his the first two RBIs of his big league career with a sharp single to left-center, away from a shifted infield.
"I don't consider myself a person that strikes out a lot, and then I struck out six times in a row, for the first time in my life probably," Gonzalez said. "I knew that it wasn't going to keep happening. I consider myself better than that, so I was sticking to what I was doing. I knew it wouldn't happen a seventh time."
An oddly languid response to a Tristan Peters comebacker allowed Meidroth to come home from third on a forceout at second, and an early four-spot gave the Sox breathing room that never shrank. The successful conversion of that early opportunity served to soften the blow of the raft of baserunners the Sox stranded the rest of the afternoon.
Bradley allowed a baserunner in every inning, at least two in every inning but his last, and used 65 pitches over the first three frames. Yet he still came an out shy of a line of five innings with four runs allowed thanks to a series of narrow escapes that might have gone down as Moments Where the Sox Lost the Game on a different day:
- Montgomery flies out to deep center to end the second, stranding a pair, but only after Sam Antonacci's leadoff hustle double attempt was unsuccessful
- Drew Romo grounds into an inning-ending double play in the third, wasting runners at the corners
- Montgomery strikes out swinging on four pitches, stranding a pair of walks in the fourth
- Eric Orze comes in and strikes out Romo to strand a Tristan Peters double in the fifth
- The trend extends beyond Bradley entirely when Randal Grichuk comes into pinch-hit against lefty Taylor Rogers, and is felled by Orlando Arcia making a leaping stab at his line drive, wasting a two-out Romo double.
- Montgomery lined out to center with the bases loaded in the ninth to cap an 0-for-6 afternoon.
But instead, all these annoying things happened, and the Sox won by eight runs.
Bullet points:
*A career-high four hits were part of Antonacci's six times on base, but he also walked and--obviously--took a hit-by-pitch. After his hustle double attempt failed in the second, he merely tried again and succeeded while knocking in Nishida in the sixth, who had reached second on butchery from Gray at short that accounted for two of the Twins' three errors on the day.
"He's just crazy," Gonzalez said of Antonacci. "Not that he's playing recklessly, but he's crazy. He's stretching doubles and everyone wants to do that obviously. But he's fast enough to do crazy things."
*Montgomery drew the collar and the golden sombrero out of the cleanup spot. Luckily, Antonacci, Benintendi and Vargas combined for seven hits, six walks and six runs scored. An off day in Philadelphia sounds pretty nice right about now.
*Derek Hill took a 97 mph sinker off his left hand in the ninth and was wearing a wrap on it postgame. Venable said he would be evaluated, likely including an X-ray. Vargas, running gingerly and wearing a wrap on his right knee throughout the series, was pinch-hit for in the ninth after a day that saw him walk and score twice apiece, and add an RBI single.
"He's feeling it pretty good," Venable said of Vargas. "As somebody who is a guy that runs so hard, doing that these last couple weeks, these last couple of months, at the end of 13-straight, he's maybe got some heavy legs."
*By all accounts, Twins manager Derek Shelton is a kind man, but him challenging Gonzalez's tag on Keaschall at first for the final out of an 8-0 getaway day will take some time to get over.
