Back-to-back homers by Brooks Lee, Carlos Correa help Twins split doubleheader with White Sox

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.

GAME 2 BOXSCORE: Twins 3, White Sox 2

Case in point: The Twins’ game-winning run which was set up by a Buxton double that was traveling only 61 mph off his bat and landed all of 175 feet away in short right field. Buxton reached full speed halfway up the line and was halfway to second base by the time his popup landed on the grass.

“It’s incredible. Even after watching him for the last six years from the dugout, he still amazes when he turns it on,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. “He was moving just so much faster than anything else going on out there on that play. It catches you by surprise.”

Jeffers followed with a line drive over third baseman Danny Mendick’s head, scoring Buxton from second base and allowing the Twins to salvage a split. Minnesota had been averaging 7.3 runs per game in July, but that dropped to 6.1 runs with only four scored Wednesday.

Pablo López gave up two runs over five innings in the second game, his final start before the All-Star break, striking out five. An Andrew Benintendi double in the second inning drove home one run, and catcher Martín Maldonado hit his second home run of the series an inning later, dropping a first-pitch curveball into the White Sox bullpen.

The Twins’ first-inning failure seemed to energize Fedde, who never allowed another Twin to advance past first base. He retired José Miranda on a shallow fly ball to center field, Carlos Santana on a strikeout, and Lee on a forceout at second base. The Twins considered challenging the call — Trevor Larnach seemed to arrive simultaneously with Nicky Lopez’s throw — but chose not to, ending the inning.

GAME 1 BOXSCORE: White Sox 3, Twins 1

“It was just a buzzkill when it happens in the first inning like that. It kills a lot of momentum,” Correa said. “He’s having a great year, but yeah, we didn’t get the job done. The dugout was a little dead. [The second-game home runs] were the spark that we needed.”

“You knew the offense would show up eventually, and it did,” Baldelli said. “The homer from Brooks was big, got us going. Sometimes it’s going to be difficult, but we found a way to get something going. It’s coming from everywhere these days.”