CHICAGO – The Twins are setting home run records again, and good thing: Without home runs, they would have scored only one run over 18 innings on Wednesday.
But Brooks Lee and Carlos Correa hit back-to-back homers in the sixth inning of Game 2, and Ryan Jeffers singled home Byron Buxton an inning later, carrying the Twins to a 3-2 victory over the White Sox at Guaranteed Rate Field, and a split of the afternoon doubleheader forced by Tuesday’s rainout.
“No matter what type of ballgame it is,” Lee observed, “power will keep you in it.”
It works the other way, too, of course. White Sox righthander Erick Fedde pitched five scoreless innings in the first game, and Luis Robert Jr. smacked a 416-foot home run to lift Chicago to a 3-1 victory, the White Sox’s lone win in 10 meetings with the Twins this season.
Matt Wallner provided the Twins’ only run in that game with a home run into the right-field seats. It wasn’t enough for the win, but it kept alive Minnesota’s historic streak: By homering in both games Wednesday, the Twins have hit at least one homer in 28 consecutive games, tying the 2023 Atlanta Braves for the second-longest such streak in MLB history.
“Wow, I didn’t even know that. Really?” said Correa, who has homered eight times during the streak. “That just says we have a lot of great hitters who get it done on a daily basis. I feel like it’s a different guy every day hitting a home run. Wow, that’s impressive.”
Only the Yankees’ 31-game streak with a home run in 2019 was longer. The Twins, who that same summer set the all-time MLB record for most home runs in a season by hitting 307, could tie the longest streak this weekend in San Francisco.
“We’re never out of a game. We can hit the home runs, but we can also blooper single, blooper double, blooper get ‘em in,” Jeffers said. “We can put the bat on the ball and get guys across, and that’s what matters.”