Twins bullpen gives up two home runs in 6-2 loss to White Sox

The Twins came into Friday night's game with a mirror-image pair of streaks in play: They had homered in nine consecutive games, and surrendered a home run in seven straight, each the longest such streaks of the season.

One of those stretches is over now. The wrong one, for the Twins.

Tim Anderson broke a tie with a fourth-inning fly ball that carried into the White Sox bullpen, and Adam Engel became the second White Sox center fielder to homer in two nights, and Chicago crept another game closer in the AL Central standings with a 6-2 victory at Target Field.

Perhaps even more irritating: Both White Sox home runs cleared the fence, and an outfielder's grasp, by maybe a foot, maybe just inches.

"Those balls are right there. They're tough plays, though," Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. "Games are decided by small margins sometimes. But if we play better, we're going to win."

Cleveland's victory over the Tigers drew the Guardians within 2½ games of the Twins, who have lost six of their past eight games. The White Sox now trail by only three games with two more to play here before the All-Star break.

Luis Arraez smacked a seventh-inning fly ball to the warning track in center field, but the Twins, who had rocketed 18 home runs in nine games since the Fourth of July, got no closer to clearing the fences against White Sox righthander Michael Kopech and four relievers. Instead, they resorted to their homestand habit of setting themselves up for big innings, then letting them fizzle.

"Sometimes you go up there and try to beat the world with one swing. We're not going to beat the world with one swing," Baldelli said. "Sometimes with runners in scoring position, it's just about having a good at-bat. We might be trying to do too much at certain times. There are other times where we're having the at-bats we want, and we're just not getting the results right now."

The Twins put runners in scoring position with less than two outs five times, but they scored in only one of them. Alex Kirilloff, who left the bases loaded in the first inning with a groundout on Thursday, faced the same situation a day later, but this time delivered a double to right field, scoring two runs.

But they were the Twins' only runs of the night; they went 0-for-6 with runners in scoring position after the first inning.

Devin Smeltzer gave up two runs over three innings, then was told his night was over.

"It hurts to come out there," said Smeltzer, who hasn't started a Twins victory since June 23. "I would have liked to go another few there. I was pretty blindsided by that."

But Baldelli said that was mostly by design. The White Sox lineup is heavy on righthanded power hitters who grind down lefthanders, so the Twins decided beforehand to let him face that batting order twice.

"I thought today the best chance to go out there and win the game was to get our bullpen guys in there earlier than normal," Baldelli explained. "Our pitchers are going to be caught off guard in one way or another when we do this, but you're not going to tell a guy that before the game starts. We didn't know how many innings Smeltz would end up going, but I knew it could be shorter than normal."

What followed was a parade of relief pitchers, five in all — and the game-deciding blows.

Anderson's home run came off Emilio Pagan, who has allowed eight this season. Engel, who entered early in Friday's game to replace Thursday's grand-slammer Luis Robert, hit a long fly ball off Griffin Jax that carried just out of Alex Kirilloff's reach and into the left-field planters. The three-run shot was the 52nd home run surrendered by the Twins bullpen this season, the most in the American League.