Twins unload on Astros with bases loaded, key hits spark 8-2 win; Louie Varland excels

HOUSTON – Louie Varland's speed was the key to his masterful success and the Twins' 8-2 victory on Wednesday, Rocco Baldelli insisted. But he wasn't talking about the righthander's mid-90s velocity.

Varland retired the Astros on only six pitches in the second inning, then camped out in the dugout while Houston starter Hunter Brown toiled through a 36-pitch third. And Varland's impatient response? A seven-pitch, two-minute third.

"I hate waiting around in those long innings," Varland jokingly complained after throwing seven shutout innings against the World Series champions, the best start of his 12-game-long career. "I know we have to have those innings to score runs. But for me as a pitcher, I want to be out there right away and keep the momentum going an everything."

The Twins had plenty of momentum, racking up 11 hits and scoring eight runs to win a series in southern Texas for only the second time since 2014.

"Louie made life difficult because their guy kept having to run back out there immediately," Baldelli said. "That's what it looks like when a guy just keeps throwing strikes It helps our offense to be right back in the dugout."

And you'll never guess what happened when they did. Word must have gotten out about how to silence the Twins.

Brown probably knew about it, so when Max Kepler and Willi Castro led off the third innings with singles, it must have made sense to walk Michael A. Taylor. And Parker Mushinski surely was aware of the numbers, so when he relieved Brown in the fifth with Alex Kirilloff and Kyle Farmer on base in the fifth inning, he simplified things and hit Joey Gallo with a pitch.

Ha ha, joke's on them. The Twins, baseball's worst team with bases loaded, erased two months of mostly failure with the big hits they've been searching for all year. Donovan Solano recorded the team's first bases-loaded hit since May 13 with a two-run single to drive in Kepler and Castro, and Ryan Jeffers collected the Twins first extra-base hit — of the season — with three runners on base, driving in Kirilloff and Farmer with a ground-rule double that bounced over the right-field wall.

"We were getting close in those situations. We missed a lot of opportunities to get runs," Solano said of the team's MLB-worst .109 average, coming in, with bases loaded. "But we can't think about it. We can't make more pressure on us. We as a team need to take those at-bats like normal at-bats."

It helps when the Astros go 0-for-0 with the bases loaded, because Varland never any of them so much as touch third base. The rookie righthander allowed just four hits, all of them singles, and struck out five.

A Twins' lineup without Byron Buxton, Carlos Correa and Jorge Polanco closed the month of May with one of the more heartening performances of the year. Brown struck out five of the first six hitters he faced, but Solano breaking the bases-loaded jinx seemed to loosen up the entire batting order. Kirilloff followed Solano's hit with an RBI single, one of five hits (and 11 times on base) he contributed in the three-game visit to Houston.

And one inning after Jeffers' two-run double, the Twins added two more, with Solano doubling home Castro and Taylor for his first four-RBI — heck, his first multiple-RBI — game as a Twin.

Said Baldelli: "Yeah, we had a lot of guys today. Solano, really good at-bats. AK [Kirilloff], great at-bats. And Willi Castro just doing an assortment of things out there again. He was awesome at third base today, and those plays at third base were not easy. He made play after play, showed off his arm a little bit."

Perhaps the only worrisome detail about the Twins' big finish to a mediocre 12-15 month was another mystifying performance by Jorge López. The former All-Star reliever, who didn't allow an earned run over 12 innings in April, threw a 97-mph down-the-middle sinker with his first pitch on Wednesday, and Jake Myers clobbered it 403 feet into the Astros' bullpen. Two pitches later, a 90-mph slider sat in nearly the same spot, and pinch-hitter Yainer Díaz blasted it into the Crawford boxes.

López then walked Mauricio Dubon, though not before whistling a pitch under his chin, and hit Jeremy Peña on the hand. Brock Stewart took over and struck out all three hitters he faced to prevent more damage, but Lopez, who had a 0.00 ERA in April, posted a 9.00 mark in May, allowing 11 earned runs and five homers in 11 innings.

"Well, he's not happy with his outing today, that's for sure. I wouldn't expect him to be," Baldelli said. "But he's going to regroup and he'll be ready to go and I will not hesitate to pitch him again tomorrow."