BOSTON � Rick Porcello may have made Target Field his second home. But Fenway Park isn't Target Field.
Porcello, whose eight wins in the Twins' home park are the most by any visiting pitcher, was ragged and a frazzled by Minnesota's lineup in his own current home on Tuesday, finally breaking down under the weight of the inevitable Twins homers. Nelson Cruz cracked his 35th of the season, and Miguel Sano followed moments later with a 450-foot blast that knocked Porcello out, and the Twins held on for a 6-4 victory over the Red Sox.
The first day of a 12-game stretch against teams with winning records couldn't have gone any better for the Twins. In addition to battering an old foe, one who shut them out over seven innings in June, the Twins fattened their AL Central lead to 6 { games when the Indians blew a three-run lead and fell to the White Sox. The Twins' magic number for clinching their first division title since 2010 now stands at 18.
They also won despite turning over the night's pitching chores entirely to the bullpen, albeit one that has been bloated by roster call-ups to 16 members. Randy Dobnak made the first "start" of his career, but given that he had pitched twice in the past five days, it was a short one. Dobnak pitched one scoreless inning, then gave way to Lewis Thorpe, who handled the next 3 1/3 innings. Four more relievers followed, and the Twins successfully coped with the temporary loss of Kyle Gibson to the injured.
Not that it was easy.
Thorpe retired nine straight batters after a leadoff double, but then quickly got into trouble in the bottom of the fifth. A leadoff walk to Mitch Moreland and a single by Boston catcher Christian Vazquez started the threat, a wild pitch added to the danger, and a ground out scored the first Red Sox run. Thorpe was removed after walking ninth-place hitter Jackie Bradley Jr., and Trevor May got reigning MVP Rookie Betts to pop harmlessly to right.
But after five straight fastballs to Rafael Devers produced a 2-2 count, May tried a slider. Devers wasn't fooled, driving it high and beyond the foul-pole in right field, a three-run homer that suddenly made the game competitive again.
The lead only got more precarious when Red Sox outfielder Andrew Benintendi greeted Taylor Rogers with a home run of his own in the eighth inning, a solo blast over the left-field wall. Benintendi became the first left-handed hitter to homer off Rogers in more than two years, since the Dodgers' Cody Bellinger connected on July 24, 2017.
And the Red Sox put the tying run on second base with one out in the ninth and Betts and Devers due up. But Rogers retired Betts on a one-hop comebacker to the mound, and struck out Devers on three pitches to earn his 23rd save.
Porcello, a Cy Young winner in 2016, was shaky from the start, hitting Max Kepler with a pitch to open the game. A walk moved Kepler to second, and he scored on Sano's broken-bat single to left, a hit that broke a couple of skids _ an 0-for-13 against the Red Sox this season, and a 1-for-22 mark in Fenway over the past two years _ for the Twins' slugger.
Jake Cave added a couple of runs with a two-out triple off the center field wall in the third inning. And Cruz and Sano, with a Luis Arraez single between them, finished the job with their long home runs in the fifth.
