MINNEAPOLIS -- Most hitters thrive with the bases loaded, because pitchers become tentative, fearful of making mistakes. But this season, Gio Urshela is the exception, managing only one hit, a one-run single, in 11 such situations.
Until Monday.
With two outs in the fifth inning, Urshela batted with three teammates on base, each of them after drawing walks. The Twins third baseman ran the count to 3-and-2, then reached out and poked Josh Schreiber's slider on the outside corner into Target Field's right-field corner. All three scored on Urshela's double, the decisive blow in the Twins' 4-2 victory over the Red Sox.
Minnesota's fourth consecutive victory boosted them within a game and a half behind Cleveland in the AL Central. The Guardians, idle on Monday, open a three-game series with wild-card contender Baltimore on Tuesday.
Urshela has quietly been a reliable run producer for the Twins since arriving in Minnesota via trade just before spring training opened, and his 53 RBIs rank third on the Twins behind fellow infielders Jorge Polanco and Jose Miranda. So his odd 1-for-11 success rate with the bases loaded — albeit with four sacrifice flies — hadn't matched his overall production and appeared to be a product of random chance.
Perhaps that's why Red Sox manager Alex Cora summoned Schreiber, a righthander, to face Urshela with Boston's lead in jeopardy. Schreiber, owner of a 2.24 ERA, quickly fell behind 3-and-1. Urshela fouled off low strike, but didn't miss the next pitch. By the time Alex Verdugo tracked down Urshela's line drive in the corner, Luis Arraez, Carlos Correa and Miranda had scored.
The hit prevented Dylan Bundy's second straight loss. The righthander allowed nine hits and a walk and retired only 14 batters, but the Red Sox kept squandering opportunities, managing only two runs against Bundy and three times leaving a runner stranded on third base. He departed with runners on first and third in the fifth, but Caleb Thielbar struck out former Twins teammate Rob Refsnyder to end that threat.
The Twins' finish-a-win corps of relievers — Thielbar, Jhoan Duran, Griffin Jax and Jorge Lopez — retired 13 of the final 14 Red Sox hitters. Minnesota's bullpen has allowed only three runs in its last 22 innings.
The Twins fell behind on Alex Verdugo's RBI double in the third inning, and another run-scoring double by Reese McGuire in the fourth made it a two-run deficit. They cut the gap in half by stringing together two hits and a walk — loading the bases with no outs — in the fourth for Jake Cave, who delivered a sacrifice fly for his sixth RBI in the past three games.
