After battling Crochet, Twins find elusive big swings they need

BOSTON -- Second in strikeouts (50) in the American League coming into Sunday afternoon. A 2.05 ERA and a .179 opponents’ batting average. The Twins had their work cut out for them facing Red Sox lefty Garrett Crochet in the series finale at Fenway Park.

“I want to go out there and have very tough at-bats against Crochet, keep him in the zone, try to avoid that slider that he’ll throw down and out of the zone,” manager Rocco Baldelli said ahead of the rubber match.

Beyond the walls of the manager’s office in the visitors’ clubhouse, Byron Buxton must have been listening. Before fans could settle into their seats, Buxton sent Crochet’s first pitch into the first row of the Green Monster Seats.

Crochet held the Twins to the one run, but Minnesota put the pressure on Boston’s ace and forced the Red Sox to turn to their bullpen after five innings in an eventual 5-4 win to take the series.

“It’s not just only about the wins, just how hard fought they were,” Carlos Correa said. “It almost seemed like before that, we were losing all those close games, and we were able to turn it up at the end enough to go out and get those Ws. And it’s a great team on the other side, so it definitely felt great.”

Step one was getting Crochet out of the game. Part of the game plan was to take away Crochet’s fastball early and force the lefty to turn to his changeup, sinker and cutter. Buxton did his part by firing a 93.5 mph fastball out of the park to open the game, and the Twins held steady in putting the pressure on Crochet to adjust.

Step two was attacking the bullpen early. Reliever turned starter turned long reliever Garrett Whitlock entered for Crochet and pitched a 1-2-3 sixth, but the Twins tagged the right-hander for two runs in the seventh to tie the game at 3.

Baldelli spoke earlier in the series about the Twins repeatedly being just a swing away in some of their recent losses. On Sunday, they found that swing and more.

Ryan Jeffers, who homered in the series opener, provided the game-tying swing with a single to left field. And Harrison Bader had the game-winning swing on a 2-2 fastball from righty Justin Slaten for a two-out double in the eighth to drive in Correa.

Bader has been “as advertised” on defense since joining the Twins in February as a plus-defensive outfielder who offers depth behind Buxton. He’s delivered with explosive defense and bringing the energy, and now he’s giving Minnesota a leg up on offense. Bader's go-ahead hit on Sunday extended his hitting streak to eight games, over which he’s hit .429 with six runs scored.

“When you have him hitting toward the bottom of the order being really productive regularly, he’s had fine at-bats, he’s been on base, he’s hit a few homers and extra-base hits,” Baldelli said. “I think, really, the competitiveness of his at-bats on a pitch-by-pitch basis has stood out in a really positive way, and it’s something I’ve noted.”

Bader’s approach is representative of the Twins’ offense as a whole. Despite not always getting the results, the at-bats have been competitive and indicate that more of those elusive swings Baldelli spoke of could be just around the corner.

Saturday and Sunday served as good evidence of that. Minnesota started its road trip strong with a dominant win in Cleveland on Monday in which it put up 11 runs before scoring just seven runs over its next four games. Friday’s opener in Boston got away from the Twins late, and then back-to-back hard-fought wins gave them a 3-4 record on the two-city trip.

“The two wins to finish it, the types of games that we won, I think those are things to be very pleased about,” Baldelli said. “Our pitching did a really nice job overall on the trip. I have to be really happy with what we saw. Our starters gave us great opportunities to win all week long. I think there is a lot of good that is going to come out of this trip.”