CLEVELAND _ Max Kepler absolutely will not allow the Twins to lose three straight games.
The Twins staved off their first 0-for-3 stretch of the season yet again on Thursday, and no surprise, Kepler was right in the middle of it. Of course he was _ he feels right at home in Progressive Field.
Kepler crashed three home runs off Trevor Bauer, the second three-homer game of his career and the 10th in Twins history, and Minnesota halted its two-game slide with a 5-4 win over the Indians, restoring its AL Central lead to double digits: 10 { games.
Four times this season the Twins have lost back-to-back games, and all four times, they've responded with a victory, stretching their franchise-record start without a three-game skid to 61 games. And in those four streak-stoppers, Kepler has merely batted .533, going 8-for-15 with four home runs.
The Twins' leadoff hitter's big night must have felt a bit familiar to Kepler this time, even though it's been nearly four years since he had his last three-homer game. It came on Aug. 1, 2016, during his rookie season, with fellow rookie Jose Berrios on the mound and looking unhittable. Berrios did his part again Thursday, limiting the Indians to two hits over six innings, the only blemish to his shutout a fifth-inning solo home run by Roberto Perez.
Bauer wasn't bad, either, limiting the Twins to just five hits over eight innings, a 119-pitch performance that, aside from Kepler's at-bats, allowed only one runner to reach third base. But he couldn't stop the German slugger, for a change.
Ironically, Kepler had faced Bauer more times in his career than any other pitcher (33 entering the night), and had never homered against him. Now? Kepler has hit more homers off Bauer than any other pitcher, though he's got three against Anibal Sanchez, too.
Kepler led off the game by lining a low changeup into the right-field seats, his third leadoff homer of the season. Two innings later, he fouled off three straight pitches before getting an 80-mph slider at the knees, a pitch he lined just inside the right field foul pole to score Willians Astudillo ahead of him. Bauer walked Kepler in the fifth inning, but pitched to him again in the seventh. This time, Kepler jumped on a first-pitch fastball, again low in the strike zone, and clobbered it 406 feet.
Trying to become the first Twin with a four-homer game, Kepler hit a ground ball into the second-base hole in the ninth inning off Indians reliever Josh Smith, but he beat Smith to first base. No four-homer night, but it was the third four-hit night of Kepler's career, and the second time he had reached base five times.
The Indians made the game closer than the Twins would have liked once Berrios departed. Cleveland struck for a pair of runs in the seventh inning, one scoring on a Tyler Naquin single of Matt Magill, the other on a Perez sacrifice fly.
And in the ninth, with the Twins nursing a two-run lead, rookie Orlando Mercado crushed a pinch-hit home run into the left-field bleachers off Taylor Rogers.
But Rogers retired Perez on a ground out, and the Twins' avoided a three-game losing streak again.
