LOS ANGELES — In the early days of his career, Royce Lewis earned himself a reputation as “Mr. Grand Slam,” after hitting three of them in an eight-game span.
Turns out, a little check swing will do the trick almost as well. Or at least it did on Tuesday.
The third baseman’s grounder was picked up by reliever Edgardo Hernandez, who threw the ball into right field. As it rolled all the way to the outfield wall, all three runners came around to score in the seventh inning of the Twins’ 10-7 win over the Dodgers on Thursday night at Dodger Stadium.
Those runners had reached base by walk, three of seven for the Twins (49-52) on the night. And while the Dodgers (59-43) didn’t help themselves defensively, the Twins sure made them pay. Six of those seven baserunners who came around to score in the win, including Carlos Correa on a Lewis bases-loaded walk in the sixth inning which broke open a tied game.
“We stayed very disciplined today,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “It’s one thing to be disciplined. It’s another when you get to 2-0 and you don’t try to beat the world with one swing (and) you actually continue with the disciplined approach. There was a lot of nodding and approval in the dugout today from what we saw from our position players.”
There sure was plenty to like for the Twins, from all the walks to Christian Vázquez driving in three runs — his first RBIs since June 8 — to Correa getting on base four times, including three times to lead off an inning.
“Obviously home runs are king in the game, but you have to understand that when you’re leading off, you cannot get too big,” Correa said. “You have to play your role. That’s get on base and start a rally.”
The Twins had a few of those, scoring three runs in the second, sixth and seventh innings while adding one for good measure in the ninth.
And they would need almost all of those runs as the Dodgers chipped away throughout the game.
Twins starter Simeon Woods Richardson issued plenty of free passes of his own — five — and flirted with trouble in both the second and third innings.
It finally caught up to him in the fourth, when, after he walked the first two batters, Andy Pages made him pay, hitting a curveball out to left-center to tie the game up and end the starter’s night.
From there, the Twins turned to their stable of relievers, using seven different pitchers to seal the win. After Danny Coulombe, Brock Stewart, Louie Varland and Griffin Jax each pitched an inning, the Twins turned to Anthony Misiewicz in the eighth inning. The southpaw’s outing was cut short when he suffered what Baldelli described as “a pec strain of some kind,” leading the Twins to turn to Jhoan Duran earlier than expected.
The closer ended up throwing two innings to finish off the game, despite the Twins carrying a five-run lead into the ninth inning, perhaps a sign of how important Tuesday’s game was with the trade deadline nearing.
“Pitching staff, bullpen did a great job of keeping us in the game. We took great at-bats,” Woods Richardson said. “That’s the type of quality winning baseball we need. Sometimes it takes everybody to grab and oar and get in the boat together and paddle.”
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