Twins score twice in 11th and improve to 8-0 against White Sox with 8-6 win
Brooks Lee and Manuel Margot drove in runs in the 11th inning and the Minnesota Twins topped the Chicago White Sox 8-6 on Monday night.
Lee's second RBI single of the game scored automatic runner Max Kepler. Byron Buxton raced home from third on Margot's soft groundout, and the Twins won their third straight and improved to 8-0 against the major league-worst White Sox this season.
Jhoan Duran (5-3) pitched a hitless 10th for the win. Kody Funderburk, the seventh Twins reliever, worked a perfect inning for his first career save.
Jared Shuster (1-2) allowed both runs in the 11th and took the loss as Chicago fell a season-worst 41 games below .500 (26-67).
Chicago's Nicky Lopez looped a double in the eighth for his second hit and RBI of the game, tying it at 6.
Carlos Correa hit a towering solo homer to cap a four-run seventh that put the Twins ahead 6-5. Correa’s 12th homer followed Matt Wallner's two-run drive off reliever Jordan Leasure that tied it 5-all.
Minnesota’s Trevor Larnach also went deep. Buxton had three hits and an RBI.
Light-hitting White Sox catcher Martín Maldonado smacked his third homer, and second in three games. He entered batting .101.
Eloy Jiménez, the oft-injured slugger in the middle of Chicago’s lineup, had two hits and drove in a run to snap a 10-game drought without an RBI. Corey Julks added an RBI double.
Leasure, recalled from Triple-A Charlotte earlier in the day, was tagged for four runs and got only two outs after relieving starter Chris Flexen and inheriting a 5-2 lead.
Twins starter Chris Paddack allowed two runs and three hits in five innings after being reinstated from the 15-day injured list. The right-hander walked two, struck out three and threw 78 pitches as he came back from right arm fatigue.
Flexen gave up two runs and seven hits in six innings, striking out four and walking one.
Larnach's homer in the first put Minnesota ahead. Maldonado’s shot in the third tied it at 1.
The Twins took a 2-1 lead in the fourth on doubles by Kepler and Buxton. Lopez scored on Julks’ double to tie it at 2.
Jiménez and Lopez had RBI singles in Chicago’s three-run sixth.
White Sox outfielder Tommy Pham was scratched from the lineup with a dental issue, the team said. Luis Robert Jr. didn’t start on a scheduled day off, but entered as a pinch hitter in the sixth.
On Tuesday, the Twins send Bailey Ober (8-4, 4.12 ERA) to the mound against the White Sox’s Erick Fedde (6-3, 3.13).