As if getting major league hitters out isn’t pressure enough, now the Twins’ starters have another burden to carry to the mound: Don’t blow the streak.
Winning streak reaches 11 as Twins top Red Sox 5-2
The streak is Minnesota’s longest since 2006, and is the third-longest in team history. Chris Paddack pitched six shutout innings.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
May 4, 2024 at 5:09AM
“Yeah, we try to make it a joke. Make it personal out there and have fun,” Chris Paddack said Friday night after pitching the Twins to their 11th consecutive victory, 5-2 over the Red Sox. “We’re definitely on a tear right now, and we definitely want to keep the ball rolling.”
Paddack was tested right from the start when leadoff batter Jarren Duran, hit a grounder that shortstop Carlos Correa misplayed for an error. Rafael Devers followed with a double, and Paddack was facing the threat of a big inning.
“It’s an incredibly meaningful moment right there, because he really picked up our club. … Paddy just shut them down,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said of Paddack, who went strikeout-popup-ground out to keep the game scoreless and build his own confidence. “That could have been an inning where they score a lot of runs. But Paddack just took control.”
And he never gave it up. Paddack pitched six shutout innings, never allowing another Red Sox baserunner to reach second base, and the Twins tied the third-longest winning streak in team history.
“It’s a roller-coaster of events,” Paddack said of the Twins’ 7-13 start and 11-0 streak. “The biggest thing is, we’re enjoying this little run. There’s been a lot of guys who have stepped up since Opening Day, and that’s awesome to be a part of.”
Especially since, unlike the previous 10 wins, this one came against a team that isn’t in last place, and with one of the league’s best starting pitchers thus far on the mound. Tanner Houck had made six previous starts, and only once had he given up a run before the seventh inning.
Until Friday. Willi Castro led off the third inning with a line drive that barely landed on the fair side of the foul line, a double that stretched his own hot streak to a career-high nine straight games with a hit.
Two outs later, Edouard Julien hit a perfectly placed ground ball that wound up in left field, scoring Castro with the only run either team would manage through six innings.
“I’m just trying to get a good pitch to hit. I know he was throwing a lot of off-speed — changeup, cutter, slider,” Castro said. “I just went up there looking to get one of those pitches and execute.”
He helped break the game open with a four-run seventh, by laying down a sacrifice bunt, of all things. With two runners on base, Boston catcher Reese McGuire picked up Castro’s bunt in front of the plate and made the ill-advised decision to throw it to second base. The ball sailed into center field, enabling pinch runner Austin Martin to score.
A walk loaded the bases and set up the easiest RBI of Julien’s career: Red Sox reliever Naoyuki Uwasawa waited too long to deliver a 3-2 pitch, and Julien was awarded first base, forcing home Castro. Ryan Jeffers followed with a double into center field — just the Twins’ third hit all season with the bases loaded — to add two more.
“What we’ve been doing this whole stretch is hang in against starters that are giving us fits, and stay locked in, stay in there and give ourselves a chance late in the game,” Jeffers said. “That’s what we did tonight.”
And by doing so, they tied their 11-game winning streaks of 2003 and 2006, one short of a late 1980 streak that ranks as the Twins’ second-longest.
The Twins’ record of 15 in a row was set in 1991.
“I don’t think anybody in this clubhouse is counting what number we’re on. It’s fun winning baseball games, and we keep finding different ways to win,” Jeffers said. “We’re not winning the same way every day — we’re just playing good baseball.”
Only 34 years old, Jeremy Zoll has worked his way up the organizational ranks since coming to the Twins in 2018.
