BALTIMORE _ Kyle Gibson demonstrated Monday he still needs work on getting ahead of hitters, and he's still got problems working out of trouble. But his timing? Couldn't be better.
Gibson returned to the Twins and was credited with his first victory since Sept. 13, but it wasn't exactly the triumphant homecoming he or the team envisioned. Gibson was clubbed around for six runs in five innings, but the Twins offense provided a season-high 14 runs and roared to a 14-7 victory at Camden Yards.
Gibson's 8.20 ERA coming into the game, a dismal mark that got him demoted to Class AAA Rochester earlier this month, actually rose to 8.62 with his return engagement. He had an 0-1 count against only seven of the 26 batters he faced and had runners reach base in each of his first four innings. But after falling behind 5-0, the Twins welcomed the right-hander back with an offensive explosion unmatched this season.
All nine Twins collected at least one hit, and six had more than one. Jorge Polanco smacked a career-high four hits, so did Miguel Sano, and Joe Mauer had his first three-hit game since Aug. 16, 2016. Max Kepler smashed a long home run and drove in four runs; Sano cracked his 11th of the year and drove in three, while Eduardo Escobar knocked in three more. The Twins pounded Orioles starter Ubaldo Jimenez and three relievers for 21 hits, or seven more than their previous season-high and the most they've had in a game since 2014. They even scored a run when right-hander Stefan Crichton simply dropped the ball while winding up, a balk that brought home Escobar from third base.
All those runs added up to the Twins' fourth win in their last five games and their seventh road win in their last eight away from home. Perhaps most remarkable statistic: The Twins are now 12-5 on the road, the second-best mark in the major leagues. Exactly one year ago, the Twins had only 11 wins _ total.
Now the Twins must wrestle with what to do about Gibson, whose return was hardly impressive (though he did strike out the side in the fifth inning, his last). In the Orioles' five-run second inning, four of the runs scored after two were out, three of them on a mile-high home run by Adam Jones. The blast was Jones' 125th at Camden Yards, most ever by one player in this ballpark, one more than Rafael Palmeiro.
Gibson (1-4), who also walked four batters, managed to strand runners in scoring position in two innings, but in the fourth, he gave up another two-out run on a Manny Machado double.
But the Twins are short of starting pitchers, especially with Phil Hughes going on the disabled list Monday, so Gibson's future isn't clear.
The victory is his, though, once the hitters started rolling. Single runs in the third and fourth inning sparked some boos among Orioles fans unhappy with Jimenez, and then the Twins poured it on. Four straight hits to open the fifth inning, with Kepler's bases-loaded double the last, chased Jimenez. Escobar greeted reliever Tyler Wilson with a sacrifice fly, and Polanco followed with an RBI single to tie the game.
The Twins batted around in the sixth, lining five hits, three of them doubles, off Wilson and Crichton, and taking advantage of Baltimore second baseman Jonathan Schoop's bobbled double-play ball. The final run was the biggest ignominy _ as Crichton wound up to pitch to Jason Castro, the ball squirted out of his hand, a run-scoring balk.
Sano ended the Twins' scoring in the ninth by blasting a pitch into the left-field seats, tying him for the sixth-most homers in the AL.
