BOSTON – The new-look Twins remade themselves again. They remade themselves into the old-look Twins from earlier this month, actually.
Joey Gallo returned from the injured list, Max Kepler returned to the top of the lineup and Byron Buxton returned to ferocity after a five-day slump. The combination helped the Twins, after more than a decade of trying, finally solve Corey Kluber and end their three-game losing streak with a 10-4 victory over the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park.
"Kluber is a guy who has always thrown a lot of strikes. Maybe a few less this year, but he can always find the strike zone when he wants, and he throws a lot of pitches on the edges," Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. "You have to show you're not going to offer at all those pitches, and we did a really nice job of that today."
And the ones they did offer at traveled a long way.
Edouard Julien launched the first pitch he ever saw from the 37-year-old righthander 418 feet into the right-field seats, and Gallo celebrated his return from the injured list by crushing one just a foot shorter in the third inning. Together they pushed their team to a 7-0 lead, the most runs the Twins have ever scored off Kluber in his 25 career starts against them.
"He's obviously a great pitcher, so I was just trying to take my good 'A' swing on pitches in the zone that I can do damage with," Gallo said of Kluber, the two-time Cy Young Award winner with Cleveland who has now started 0-4 for the Red Sox. "Eventually if you keep doing that, things will kind of go your way. They kind of did for us as a team."
Kluber or not, the offensive outburst was a nice change for the Twins, who had scored only nine runs on 18 hits over their previous four games, while striking out 48 times. And it was especially heartening for Baldelli to watch Kepler and Buxton make big contributions again.
Kepler, 1-for-9 since returning from the injured list, led off the game with a walk. Two batters later, Buxton ended an 0-for-15 slump with a drive to the warning track in right-center for a double, his second of the season. A Trevor Larnach ground ball scored the game's first run, and Julien shocked Kluber by pulling a cutter into the seats, his second home run of the road trip.
"Buck looked good. [Hitting coach] David Popkins spent some time setting [his] sights for a certain spot of the zone," Baldelli said. "Making sure we're on something, as opposed to trying to cover the whole zone and being on nothing. [Doing that], Buck looked sharp today at the plate."
The Twins reached double-digits for the third time in 2023 off Boston reliever Ryan Brasier in the sixth. Kepler hit a ground-rule double, Buxton drew a walk and Larnach cleared the wall in straightaway center four rows up, giving him a four-RBI night and a team-high 13 on the season.
Considering Joe Ryan had given up only six runs all season, that was plenty of support for the Twins righthander. Ryan surrendered three runs over six innings, one of them coming on Kiké Hernández's 100th career home run, and improved to 4-0, one short of Jerry Koosman's 1979 Twins record for consecutive victories to start a season.
Brent Headrick made his major league debut in relief of Ryan, and retired the first six hitters he faced before two walks, a single and a sacrifice fly by Jarren Duran in the ninth cost him his first run.
He worked fast, sometimes winding up with 10 seconds still left on the pitch clock. He even returned to the mound before all the Red Sox had left the field between innings.
"He was eager," Baldelli said. "I don't blame him. I would be too."
Actually, the rookie lefthander said, "that's been a thing ever since I've been in high school. The pitch clock has just been a benefit to me. Once you go fast, the hitters are going to speed up, you know?"
Still, Headrick, a starter in the minors who is temporarily filling a long-relief role for the Twins — "I thought I was going to be nervous, and I wasn't," he said — earned his first save as a professional.
"I had forgotten I could even get the save," he said with a laugh. "I didn't even remember that was [possible] at that point in the game. So it was crazy."
