CLEVELAND _ Just as the Twins feared, having a starting pitcher available for Saturday's doubleheader was a big advantage for the Indians. Mike Clevinger struck out 10 Twins in eight solid innings, and really made only one mistake.
But one was enough.
Jorge Polanco, robbed of his 22nd home run of the season by Friday's rainout, simply repeated it again on Saturday, and his two-run shot off Clevinger was all the offense the Twins' bullpen would need to pull off a 2-0 victory in the first game of a day-night doubleheader at Progressive Field.
The victory allows the Twins to breathe a sigh of relief over the weekend series. With their lead inflated to 4 { games, they will leave Cleveland owning a margin of at least 2 { games with two weeks remaining _ and that's before they turn over Saturday's nightcap to a bullpen that came up big when it was needed the most.
Five Twins relievers divvied up the nine innings in historic fashion, throwing the first all-bullpen shutout in Twins' history. Devin Smeltzer, whose history against the Indians is a little messy, got the day started with two quiet innings and one tense one, but escaped a bases-loaded jam thanks to a diving catch of Carlos Santana's scorching line drive to end the inning.
Zack Littell took over for two easy innings, allowing just a pop-up single that fell in short center field _ giving him 8 2/3 shutout innings on the season against Cleveland. Tyler Duffey and Sergio Romo followed, each putting a runner on base but avoiding a run-scoring hit. And Taylor Rogers recorded the final five outs, striking out four Indians in doing so.
It's the first time in franchise history that the Twins have shut out an opponent in a game in which no pitcher threw more than three innings.
The Twins, frustrated by the sequence of events Friday that cost them a Jake Odorizzi start in such a critical series, looked overmatched by Clevinger, who had not lost a game since June 28, 10 wins ago. Five of the first eight Twins struck out swinging, in fact.
But in the third inning, the spell was briefly broken. Max Kepler lined a one-out single to right field, bringing up Polanco, who before the game had shrugged, "My longest (home run) of the season," when asked about his officially-never-happened home run of the night before.
It didn't take him long to get it back. Polanco looked at a high curveball for ball one, then pounced on an 86-mph change-up, up and away. It cleared the center-field wall by several feet, and produced the game's only runs.
