Back-to-back eighth-inning home runs give Twins second win over Angels

The first 10 days of the 2016 season were hellish for the Twins, but that's nothing compared to the year in baseball purgatory — their careers in danger of extinction — that Ricky Nolasco and Oswaldo Arcia endured in 2015.

So while the Twins celebrated their second straight victory Saturday, 6-4 over the Angels, and tried to make their 0-9 start a distant memory, it might have meant even more to the pair of no-longer-lost souls in the Minnesota clubhouse.

Nolasco overcame some second-inning turbulence to retire 16 of the last 19 hitters he faced, contributing back-to-back seven-inning starts for the first time since 2014. Arcia, hitless entering Saturday, drove in a run with a first-inning single, then belted an opposite-field home run to break a 4-4 tie in the eighth, his first long ball in almost a calendar year.

So it wasn't exactly the usual suspects on Saturday — a fact that seemed to delight their manager. "Ricky hung in there after a tough second inning [and] gave us big outs all the way through the seventh," Paul Molitor said after the Twins scored a season-high six runs. "Arcia, as we saw in spring training, when he stays on the ball, he's got power to all fields. And that was a beautiful swing."

The Twins had a few of them against Angels soft-tossing starter Jered Weaver and reliever Joe Smith, including a third-inning homer by Trevor Plouffe and a mammoth 462-foot blast into the new center-field tavern by Byung Ho Park. "That," understated Molitor, "was impressive."

But Arcia's was the winner and certainly the most redemptive. After all, he lost his job last summer and his place in the Twins' organization was in doubt, after a .199 crash landing in Class AAA last year, until the final week of spring training last month.

How good did it feel to smack his first major league homer since April 29?

"Mucho, mucho," Arcia said. "I feel great. After the season was over, I went down to Fort Myers and worked, and I can see the difference." The Twins hope so, and driving an outside pitch to left-center, rather than trying to pull it down the line, is a good sign. "It was nice to see him be involved with the win today," Molitor said.

Same for Nolasco, whose 2015 was a blur of ineffectiveness and injury. And just as he salvaged his spot in the rotation by the slimmest margin in spring camp, the righthander came within one batter of succumbing to a disastrous start on Saturday. He gave up four singles, a bases-loaded double and a walk in the second inning and faced 2014 MVP Mike Trout with two outs and Molitor standing on the top step, a reliever already warmed up and ready.

"I knew basically if I didn't get Trout, I was out. If I didn't get that strikeout, my day was done," Nolasco said. He delivered two quick strikes, but then missed three times, bringing him to the make-or-break pitch: a sinker on the outside corner. Trout flinched, but didn't swing, at the third strike.

"That was a big pitch," Nolasco said. "I just tried to make a pitch away and give myself a chance."

The whiff ended the inning and changed Nolasco's day; no Angel reached second base again until the seventh inning, when with the score tied 4-4, Nolasco faced Trout again with two outs and the go-ahead run on second. Molitor visited the mound, but Nolasco assured him he was fine. "I'm going to get this guy," Nolasco said. "I appreciated that he gave me the opportunity to face one more guy … and I'm glad [I didn't] let him down."

Trout grounded into a forceout. Arcia and Park homered an inning later. Kevin Jepsen finished up for his second save in two days. And the Twins' comeback kids, their careers on the rebound, could dance in the clubhouse.

"It's nice," Molitor mused, "when they pick you up and make it look like it was a good decision."