MINNEAPOLIS — The fastest-starting team in baseball strikes again. It helps to have the fastest starter in baseball, period.
The Twins strung together a walk and four consecutive singles to add to their MLB-leading first-inning scoring total, let Byron Buxton's irrepressible speed tack on a couple more runs, and widened their AL Central lead with a 6-3 victory over Colorado at Target Field.
They will try to defend that lead, now two games over the Guardians, during five potentially significant games in Cleveland beginning Monday night. Those games take on a different tenor after the Twins took two out of three games this from the Rockies, while the Guardians were swept at home by the Red Sox.
Joe Ryan battled his way through five sloppy innings, giving up at least one hit in each and a run in three, but for the fourth consecutive game, the Twins bullpen was spotless, this time backing up Ryan with four shutout innings. The performances aren't always clean, they aren't always easy — the first three hitters against lefty Caleb Thielbar reached base, for instance, but he and Emilio Pagan wriggled out of the jam — but Twins relievers have put up 14 consecutive zeroes since giving up four runs in the ninth inning of Wednesday's 11-10 loss to Cleveland.
This time, the Twins batting order gave them a little room for error, starting with a line-drive festival in the first inning that produced three runs, and upped their total to 58 first-inning runs in 74 games.
Then Buxton took over in the second inning, smacking a line drive toward the bullpens that he sprinted into his second triple in two days — that after not tripling even once for nearly three years. The hit drove in Luis Arraez with a run, and Carlos Correa's sacrifice fly added another.
Buxton doubled in the fourth inning, but was left stranded there. In the seventh, though, he singled to compete a 3-for-3 day (with a walk), then tore around three bases when Max Kepler doubled into the corner, scoring without a throw to provide a three-run cushion that Tyler Duffey and Jhoan Duran protected, with the latter earning his fifth save in five opportunities.
