MINNEAPOLIS _ Mitch Garver is one of the most improved players in baseball. And he offers something that most teams covet _ a catcher who has top shelf power.
But Garver is more interested in extending the Twins lead over Cleveland in the AL Central than hearing about how good he's become. And his two home runs on Saturday achieved his objective, as the Twins rallied to beat the Indians, 5-3, while returning their lead to 6 { games in the division.
The Twins trailed 2-1 in the seventh when they erupted for four runs, three coming on Garver's opposite-field blast off Nick Goody that brought the announced sellout crowd of 39,573 to its fee. His homer in the first inning was his 27th of the season, allowing him to pass Earl Battey and set the club record for most homers by a catcher in a single season.
With the Twins training room filling up with players _ Jake Cave and Nelson Cruz were kept out of the lineup because of injuries, until Cruz was ejected for arguing balls and strikes from the dugout _ Garver stepped up at the right time. The Twins had not scored more than two runs in each of their last three games.
The sellout crowd on Saturday also pushed the season attendance over 2 million, at 2,007,192.
Twins right-hander Jake Odorizzi devoured the Indians lineup on Saturday. His fastball-splitter combo forced 20 swings and misses by Cleveland hitters. He worked the top of the strike zone like a boss. And the strikeouts piled up.
Through 5 1/3 innings, Odorizzi gave up four hits and walked two while striking out 10. It was the sixth time in his career that he reached double digits with strikeouts in a game.
And for all his efforts, the Twins were trailing 2-1 when he was removed from the game in the sixth inning. He carried a 1-0 lead into the inning, but his first two _ and only two _ walks of the night came back to bite him.
After getting Francisco Lindor to pop out, Odorizzi walked Oscar Mercado and Carlos Santana to put two men on for Yasiel Puig, Puig lined a 2-2 to right center to five in Mercado with the tying run. Odorizzi was removed from the game at that point for Tyler Duffey. But Duffey bounced a breaking ball to Franmill Reyes that deflected off of catcher Garver then toward the Twins dugout. Santana scored on the wild pitch to give Cleveland a 2-1 lead.
The Twins offense was up to its old, new tricks by then. As in not scoring. They had scored two runs in each of their previous three games, batting .192 overall, going 3 for 15 with runners in scoring position and hitting just one home run. Unsurprisingly, they had lost two of those three games.
In between Garver's home runs, the Twins were 0 for 6 with runners in scoring position. They stranded the leadoff batter in the third and fourth innings. They actually had runners on second and third in the fourth but failed to score. Miguel Sano took off from third on contact and was thrown out at home on C.J. Cron's grounder. Luis Arraez, who was on second, didn't advance to third as he should have. It looked worse when the next batter, Willians Astudillo, flied out to center on a ball Arraez could have scored on.
