The Twins came into Friday night's game with a mirror-image pair of streaks in play: They had homered in nine consecutive games, and surrendered a home run in seven straight, each the longest such streaks of the season.
One of those stretches is over now. The wrong one, for the Twins.
Tim Anderson broke a tie with a fourth-inning fly ball that carried into the White Sox bullpen, and Adam Engel became the second White Sox center fielder to homer in two nights, and Chicago crept another game closer in the AL Central standings with a 6-2 victory at Target Field.
Perhaps even more irritating: Both White Sox home runs cleared the fence, and an outfielder's grasp, by maybe a foot, maybe just inches.
"Those balls are right there. They're tough plays, though," Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. "Games are decided by small margins sometimes. But if we play better, we're going to win."
Cleveland's victory over the Tigers drew the Guardians within 2½ games of the Twins, who have lost six of their past eight games. The White Sox now trail by only three games with two more to play here before the All-Star break.
Luis Arraez smacked a seventh-inning fly ball to the warning track in center field, but the Twins, who had rocketed 18 home runs in nine games since the Fourth of July, got no closer to clearing the fences against White Sox righthander Michael Kopech and four relievers. Instead, they resorted to their homestand habit of setting themselves up for big innings, then letting them fizzle.
"Sometimes you go up there and try to beat the world with one swing. We're not going to beat the world with one swing," Baldelli said. "Sometimes with runners in scoring position, it's just about having a good at-bat. We might be trying to do too much at certain times. There are other times where we're having the at-bats we want, and we're just not getting the results right now."