Twins take advantage of White Sox blunders in 8-1 victory

One play on Wednesday exemplified the ebb and flow of the Twins season during what should have been an enjoyable 8-1 victory over the White Sox.

Josh Donaldson stepped to the plate with runners on first and second and laced a double to the right center field gap.

Ryan Jeffers scored from second. Max Kepler, who was on first, wasn't far behind. But Kepler pulled up at the end of his dash and limped into the dugout with a tight left groin.

During a series in which the Twins welcomed back Donaldson and Byron Buxton from injury and Michael Pineda from the suspended list this week - getting as healthy as they have been in weeks - they now have to fret about Kepler's immediate availability.

To make matters worse, Luis Arraez, while reaching first on an error in the sixth inning, pulled up once he got to first base and immediately took himself out of the game. He's been battling tendinitis in his knee.

"This is baseball," said righthander Jose Berrios, who improved to 3-3 thanks to nasty stuff. "We can't control that. Obviously, we feel disappointed, but that's the group we have. Obviously, Kepler and Arraez left the game with injury, but hopefully, they'll get better quickly, and like I said, we have to work with the group we have. We can't think about the bad things. Just try to stay in control and go out there and do our thing."

A lot of things went right for the Twins on Wednesday. Their eight runs were the most they've scored in a game since Aug. 12, a span of 17 games between outbursts. It also was the last time they hit at least three home runs in a game.

Berrios wasn't perfect, but he was better, holding the White Sox to one run over six innings on three hits and two walks with eight strikeouts.

For one night, they resembled the BombaSquad.

But now they have to fret about potential losses of Kepler and Arraez.

"We have other guys that we're going to look to when the time comes but with Kep and with Louie, we're going to wait and see before we make any kind of statements or decide anything," Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. "We don't know enough right now before we know what we're going to do next."

After committing three errors on Monday, the White Sox committed four on Wednesday. This time, the Twins took advantage.

Before Donaldon's double, Jake Cave hit a solo homer off Chicago righthander Reynaldo Lopez, the second homer off him this season. The key to the inning might have been Arraez wearing down Lopez with a 10-pitch at-bat before flying out for the second out. The next four Twins reached base.

" We had opportunities early, great at-bats but weren't able to capitalize," Baldelli said. "And then Luis going out and having that type of at-bat that he's kind of known for, that's the kind of thing that Luis Arraez brings to the table, and also the kind of thing that you look at it and don't exactly know how it's going to factor in, you don't know how much meaning it's going to have, but I'll tell you this, those types of at-bats do change the game."

Chicago scored in the third, an inning in which Arraez and Miguel Sano each made defensive mistakes. Sano homered in the third. The Twins added two in the fifth to go up 6-1, one on a throwing error by Tim Anderson that allowed Sano to escape a rundown and score. Eddie Rosario added a two-run homer in the sixth.

"Did we push the runs across early on with all the baserunners and all that?" Baldelli said. "We weren't, but we were able to continue to build upon. We were able to continue to build off all the great at-bats our guys had, all the hard-hit balls and get to a point where we were finally able to push them across."