ANAHEIM, Calif. — Louis Varland threw more fastballs, Willi Castro pulled off a squeeze play, Byron Buxton refused to stop at second base and Trevor Larnach circled the bases because the Angels just couldn't stop him. The Twins used all that extra aggression, bordering on cheekiness, Saturday night and it earned them a 6-2 victory at Angel Stadium.
Minnesota Twins get aggressive to beat the Angels 6-2, see Byron Buxton leave early
In the night's lone hiccup, a hustling Buxton was replaced by pinch-hitter Edouard Julien, the result, the Twins said, of tightness in his right leg. The extent of his condition was not announced.
May 21, 2023 at 6:29AM
Now they have to hope it wasn't too much.
Buxton reached base three times, once beating out a double-play relay and twice drawing walks. On the two occasions that Kyle Farmer followed him by hitting singles to the outfield, Buxton hustled around second base and raced to third, sliding head-first each time.
It's exciting for the Twins when their designated hitter uses his speed like that, but this time, it came with a price. Buxton was removed from the game for pinch-hitter Edouard Julien in the sixth inning because he felt tightness in his right knee.
"He's been all over the place lately. He's been playing extraordinarily hard, taking extra bases, beating out balls," Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. "This kind of popped up, I think, because of all the running. It flared up a little bit."
Buxton won't be in the starting lineup for Sunday's road-trip finale, Baldelli said, and "we'll see what the coming days look like. I don't anticipate this being a long-term thing, but it's something we'll have to assess over the next day or two."
That was the lone hiccup in a night that otherwise went just as the Twins had hoped, and provided some relief from the bullpen shortcomings that have plagued their weeklong Southern California trip. Minnesota scored three first-inning runs, one of them on Castro's squeeze play, to back Varland, Joey Gallo hit his fourth home in a week, and though Larnach didn't get credit for a home run, he still enjoyed an entertaining tour of the bases.
"It has to be a 10 out of 10 [for] action right there," Baldelli joked. "Very impressive."
The Twins' outfielder lined a 3-2 cutter from Andrew Wantz into the right-field corner in the seventh inning, which drove in Farmer from first base. Anticipating a throw to the plate, Larnach kept running around second base.
"They've got to make a choice of whether it's me or Farm," Larnach said of his decision. "I thought I had a good chance, being how the corner plays, how you have to wait for the ball to take the turn around the corner."
Second baseman Brandon Drury conceded the run and hurried the throw in Larnach's direction, but it skipped past Gio Urshela as Larnach slid head-first.
Larnach jumped up and headed home on the error, as Urshela retrieved the ball. Urshela's throw to the plate beat Larnach there, but was too high, and Larnach slid — well, more like plopped — across the plate safely.
"Watch the replay," Larnach said, "and you'll see my legs give out halfway there."
Christian Vazquez popped out of the dugout with a bottle of water for Larnach as a joke, but Farmer grabbed it.
"I needed oxygen!" Farmer joked. "I'm older than him, I needed [the water] more. 'You're young, man! Give me that!' "
That was more than enough cushion for Varland, who stuck to his fastball more than 63 percent of the time and got nine swing-and-misses with it. Varland didn't allow a runner to reach second base until the fourth inning, and gave up just two runs — one of them a 414-foot solo blast by Shohei Ohtani — before being pulled with two runners on in the sixth inning.
The fastball "kept working so I kept throwing it and getting swings, [getting] people out. I made it work," Varland said after improving to 2-0. "I have a lot of confidence in it. Obviously it worked today, especially against Mike Trout. It was cool to strike him out."
He regretted leaving two runners on for Jovani Moran to deal with, but the lefthander got three quick outs.
"That was nails! He picked me up, big-time," Varland said. "That was a big inning and the turning point in the whole game."
Jorge López, Brock Stewart and Jhoan Duran completed the Twins' victory without another run, giving Minnesota a chance to win a series against the Angels for the first time since 2019 in Sunday's finale.
That task won't be easy. Ohtani is scheduled to pitch for the Angels, against Pablo López.
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