Ryan Jeffers’ blast leads Twins past White Sox
· Yahoo Sports
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Starting pitcher performanceCHICAGO — Trouble found Taj Bradley early on Saturday as he walked the very first batter he faced, Sam Antonacci, and then surrendered rookie Munetaka Murakami’s 30th home run of the season shortly after.
Later in the inning, shortstop Colson Montgomery took an 0-2 cutter over the heart of the plate out to right field, putting the Twins down early. But Bradley, making his career-high 28th start this season, settled in nicely after that, retiring the final batter of the first inning and then turning in three straight 1-2-3 innings.
The White Sox tagged one more run on Bradley late in his outing with a run coming around to score on a Miguel Vargas single in the fifth, bringing the score to 5-4 at the time after the Twins had come back to take the lead.
Key momentThe big swing in the game came off the bat of catcher Ryan Jeffers, who has had a power surge of late. After not hitting a home run in August until the final day of the month when he hit two, Jeffers has hit four home runs in his past five games.
That included a big swing in the fifth inning on Saturday, which turned a 3-2 deficit into a 5-3 lead.
Jeffers smashed an Anthony Kay cutter, watched it fly and tossed his bat before beginning his trot around the bases.
The Twins, who had rallied for a pair of runs in the second inning, one scoring on a Kody Clemens ground ball and another on a Brooks Lee double, tacked on one final run in the seventh to pad their lead, this one coming from a Kaelen Culpepper RBI double.
Up nextBailey Ober (7-4, 4.37 ERA) will get the ball in the series finale. The game has been picked up by Peacock and will begin at 5:20 p.m.