Sonny Gray pitched five shutout innings and Ryan Jeffers scored two runs to lead the host Minnesota Twins to a 3-1 victory over the Chicago White Sox in the rubber game of their three-game series on Wednesday in Minneapolis.
Michael A. Taylor had two hits and two RBIs, Willi Castro went 2-for-2 with a double, a run and an RBI off the bench, and Donovan Solano also had two hits for Minnesota.
Gray (2-0) allowed three hits, walked two and struck out five while lowering his ERA to 0.53. Jhoan Duran picked up his third save.
Lenyn Sosa homered, and Luis Robert Jr. and Seby Zavala had doubles for Chicago, which lost for the fifth time in seven games.
Lucas Giolito (0-1) bounced back from a poor outing his last time out to allow one run on five hits over six innings. He walked two and struck out seven but took the loss after throwing 108 pitches.
Giolito also hit shortstop Kyle Farmer in the face with a 91.6-mph fastball in the fourth inning. Farmer eventually walked off the field with a towel to his face with what the team announced was a jaw injury. He was replaced by Castro.
With a little better defense, Giolito would have left with a shutout.
Minnesota took a 1-0 lead in the fourth when Jeffers led off with a long fly ball to right that should have been caught. Instead, it rolled to the wall when outfielder Gavin Sheets got his feet tangled and fell to the ground. Jeffers was awarded a triple on the play.
The Twins then loaded the bases with one out when Farmer was hit by a pitch and Edouard Julien, making his major league debut, walked. Taylor then drove in Jeffers with a grounder that first baseman Andrew Vaughn bobbled, wiping out any chance of a forceout at home.
Minnesota added two runs in the eighth to extend the lead to 3-0. Jeffers led off with a single and scored one out later on Castro’s double into the gap in right-center. Castro later scored on Taylor’s bloop single to center.
Sosa broke up the shutout with two outs in the ninth when he drove a 101.4-mph fastball by Duran 401 feet into the second deck in right for his first homer of the season.
–Field Level Media
