MINNEAPOLIS — It took solely three large swings of the bat to swing the momentum of Sunday’s recreation — and the Twins hope that, finally, the momentum of their season can be trending up for good.
Carlos Correa’s clutch two-run single off Arizona ace Zac Gallen helped the Twins erase an early deficit earlier than homers from Max Kepler and Matt Wallner off nearer Paul Sewald erased a late one — and the primary walk-off of Wallner’s profession catapulted the Twins to a 5-3 victory at Target Field that secured a three-game sweep of the D-backs, fueled by an offense whose confidence grows by the day.
“A sweep is always good, no matter what,” Wallner mentioned. “It gives us momentum going into this road trip and then just confidence as a team going forward, stretching the division lead out more for now, and keep that, because the more, the better.”
That division lead, by the way in which? It’s now greater than ever, because the Twins’ ninth walk-off win of the yr coupled with a Guardians loss to the White Sox pushed Minnesota to a season-high 4 1/2 video games up within the American League Central, the second-largest divisional lead in MLB.
The Twins trailed by a run coming into the underside of the ninth in opposition to Sewald, the D-backs’ large acquisition on the Trade Deadline — however that was a short-lived deficit, as Kepler mashed a first-pitch fastball a Statcast-projected 438 toes to go deep for a 3rd straight recreation and tie it, 3-3.
A Jorge Polanco pinch-hit stroll gave option to Wallner, who took a strike, then crushed a four-seamer off the going through of the second deck in right-center subject for a 415-foot walk-off that gave the Twins their fourth win of the season when trailing after eight innings.
“He’s a big boy and hits the ball so hard,” supervisor Rocco Baldelli mentioned of Wallner. “I mean, really. But he’s under control. He’s never really out of control. It’s a controlled, violent swing. And he’s been doing this. That swing today just now, that’s not new. We’ve seen him doing this. He works incredibly hard.”
Wallner needed to be affected person for a lot of this season, pushed to Triple-A for big chunks of the schedule by the Twins’ logjam of left-handed nook outfielders. But like Edouard Julien earlier than him, he is forcing the group’s hand together with his productiveness, slashing .238/.333/.571 with six homers since his most up-to-date callup on July 15.
The Twins needed to be equally affected person with Kepler, whose tough 2021 and ’22 seasons and one other powerful begin to ’23 have given option to a number of the most interesting baseball of his profession, with an .894 OPS for the reason that begin of July, with extra batted balls to all fields, robust protection and, lately, upped energy.
And, after all, Correa’s season has required endurance, too, with a number of the worst offensive numbers of his profession main to 2 extra double-play grounders on Sunday — pushing his complete to an MLB-leading 22 — earlier than that go-ahead, two-run single off Gallen within the sixth gave him a tangible second of progress to understand.
“I’ve been struggling all year, that’s no secret,” Correa mentioned. “I’m not going to place my head down and simply hand over and simply say, ‘Ah, I’ll come again subsequent yr and I’ll do it for the following 5 or so years.’
“My mentality is just to go out there and figure it out every single day, keep working and working and finish strong. And then hopefully, we make the playoffs and you can go off there, and it’ll all be worth it.”
This has been a second half of streaks for the Twins. They got here out of the All-Star Break scorching, successful 9 of their first 11, then misplaced 5 in a row earlier than this current uptick by which they’ve received 5 of six in opposition to St. Louis and Arizona.
But for the primary time, armed with resilient hitters, their best kids and their greatest division lead of the yr, it looks as if the Twins are in a position to scent blood within the water in these large moments — and that confidence confirmed on Sunday.
“Kepler got, I think it was the first pitch, he hit it out, and it’s like, ‘Oh, OK. We’re here to go to maybe extras, but we’re going to win it now,’” Julien mentioned. “Sewald pitched yesterday, and it was two days in a row, and I knew when Wallner came up that he was going to hit a home run.”
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