MINNEAPOLIS _ To kill the bad taste from a mistake-filled Wednesday loss, the Twins relied on a familiar face on the pitcher's mound on Thursday. A couple of them, actually.
Jose Berrios pitched the second complete game of his career, while his teammates faced their most-frequent Target Field foe _ and foil _ and the combination turned into a satisfying 7-2 drubbing of the White Sox.
Eduardo Escobar, Ehire Adrianza and Eddie Rosario all homered off Chicago starter James Shields, who has now started more games _ and allowed more homers _ in Target Field's nine-year history than any other visiting pitcher. Escobar's shot staked the Twins to a 2-0 first-inning lead, Adrianza's home run off the facing of the upper deck in right field made it 3-0, and Rosario's blast, his fifth of the homestand, nearly reached the plaza in right field and capped a three-run, two-out uprising in the fourth inning to give the Twins their biggest lead in more than a month.
Berrios earned his seventh win of the season by dominating Chicago for the third time this year, carrying a no-hitter into the fifth inning and limiting the Sox to six hits and two runs while striking out 10. It was enough to make him ... furious. Absolutely furious.
"I was angry at myself, not at nobody else," Berrios explained after stalking around the mound, snapping the ball in his glove when receiving it from the catcher, and generally scowling at hitters before mowing them down in disgust. "When they scored two runs, I got mad at myself."
He channeled it well, considering he faced the minimum nine hitters over the final three innings and dispatched them in a ruthlessly efficient 28 pitches. Berrios is the only Twins starter to record outs in the eighth or ninth innings this season, and he's got 17 of them now.
So go ahead, poke him with a stick _ or a double down the line, whatever. Because payback, as Yoan Moncada, Jose Abreu and the White Sox learned, is painful.
"He was upset," Twins manager Paul Molitor said admiringly of Berrios, who turned his anger into a six-hit, 10-strikeout beauty. "Moncada got a hit and I think he was second-guessing, that he probably should have thrown him a breaking ball instead of a fastball. ... Abreu has been hunting sliders with men in scoring position, and he got him. That's what I was seeing."
He was also seeing a bullpen in repose, feet up and enjoying the sunny afternoon. After a doubleheader on Tuesday and a busy bullpen day Wednesday, Molitor was particularly happy that Berrios could handle all nine innings himself.
"I don't know if he's overly conscious of the fact that I'm hoping he goes nine today. But he kind of pitched like that, like he was on a mission to try to find a way to complete the game," Molitor said. "And that's what you want to see. That's how you build young people up into guys that eventually emerge on the top of your rotation."
The term for that is "ace," a word Molitor is reluctant to bestow too early on a 24-year-old, but he certainly looked the part early on. Not only did the first 14 White Sox batters not manage a hit, the first 13 didn't even get the ball out of the infield. The thought of a no-hitter began to occur to some people in the matinee Target Field crowd _ and on the pitcher's mound, too.
Yes, Berrios said, he was thinking about perfection, because "I'm always thinking no-hitter," he said. "But I know it's baseball. They're going to make adjustments."
Sure enough, catcher Omar Narvaez, batting only .170 entering the game, ended those thoughts, slugging a double into the gap in left-center and igniting Berrios' temper. He got his revenge, oddly enough, when Jose Rondon followed with a single into the left-field corner, because Narvaez slowed around third base then tried to score, a miscalculation that Rosario celebrated by nailing him with a long throw.
Berrios got a nice ovation when he took the mound for the ninth inning, and again when he finished off the complete game, earning his fourth win in five starts.
"He's been on a really good roll here. You feel good about getting deep and having a chance to win. And you can tell his confidence is developing," Molitor said of his curveball specialist, who relied more on his fastball and changeup on Thursday. "He's putting it together pretty consistently right now."
