White Sox rally to beat Twins 6-5 in game with plenty of up-and-down action

Nobody said playing out the string had to be boring.

The Twins and the Chicago White Sox, carrying 162 losses between them with a month to go, played a Labor Day game irrelevant to the playoff races but chock full of fielding mistakes, base-running head-scratchers and a roster’s worth of pitchers only marginally effective. They were rewarded with a back-and-forth contest that the White Sox won 6-5 at Target Field with a pair of eighth-inning doubles off the wall in right-center field.

The Twins have now played 22 games since Aug. 8 without winning two in a row. Worse, this was the Twins’ third consecutive loss to their American League Central rivals, something that, given Chicago’s 50-88 record, is not easy to do. Only the Pittsburgh Pirates, in last place in the National League Central, have managed to drop three straight games to the AL Central’s worst team.

BOXSCORE: White Sox 6, Twins 5

MLB standings

“We had the lead in the seventh inning,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli pointed out. “We expect to win that game. We want to win that game.”

Then they probably shouldn’t give up a dozen hits, half of them for extra bases. Though to be fair, the Twins cuffed around Chicago’s pitching, too. In fact, both teams put at least one runner on base in each of the first eight innings — then, oddly, went out in order in the ninth.

Brooks Baldwin, the White Sox’s ninth-place hitter, doubled home Bryan Ramos with the tying run against Justin Topa in the eighth inning, and Mike Tauchman followed with another double to nearly the same spot, scoring Baldwin with the go-ahead run.

Bailey Ober pitched five innings for the Twins, giving up four runs, including home runs by Colson Montgomery and Chase Meidroth. His fastball velocity was up over 91 mph through the first two innings, an encouraging sign after last week’s sub-90-mph performance. But for the 12th time in his last 13 starts, Ober couldn’t prevent a Twins loss.

“The results aren’t always backing it, so it can be frustrating,” Ober said of his hoped-for return to his early-season form. “I felt good the first two innings. Felt like I was moving fast. … I just wasn’t able to maintain the velocity, but I still pitched OK.”

His outing included something Target Field fans rarely see: Byron Buxton failing to make a spectacular play. Baldwin led off the fifth inning with a blooper to shallow center field, and Buxton raced over, then dove to pluck the ball just before it touched the grass. He got his mitt on it, but the impact of his body hitting the ground knocked it out, and Baldwin wound up on second base, eventually scoring on Tauchman’s line-drive single.

Buxton “was beating himself up pretty good” over the play, Ober said. “He was apologizing to me a few times. It’s a really hard play to make, and obviously everyone expects him to do it because he’s showed so many times that he can. … If he catches it, that’s amazing.”

Buxton drew a bases-loaded walk in the second inning to force in the Twins’ first run. In the sixth, he hit a medium-depth fly ball to left field, far enough for pinch runner DaShawn Keirsey Jr. to tag up and score the tying run in a 4-4 game.

That’s two RBI, a ho-hum nothing-new day for Buxton — which is sort of the point. It was Buxton’s fifth consecutive game with two RBI, a surprisingly extraordinary feat. Only Hall of Famers Harmon Killebrew (in 1962) and Paul Molitor (in 1996) have ever had a streak of five straight games with two or more RBI for the Twins.

And in between? Buxton created a run all his own, by doubling to center field, then moving to third on Cam Booser’s wild pitch. When catcher Kyle Teel’s throw to third base sailed into left field, Buxton scored.

Royce Lewis homered, reaching double figures for the third consecutive season with his 10th, and Matt Wallner hit a shift-busting double — it traveled all of seven feet in the air but bounced down the third base line, far from any White Sox defender. That bit of luck turned into a run when Brooks Lee, who also cut down a White Sox runner at the plate, singled him home, giving the Twins their all-too-temporary 5-4 lead.

But it wasn’t enough.