MINNEAPOLIS — For a change, the Twins might wish they could stay home. Sam Hentges is probably happy to leave home.
Andrelton Simmons, Josh Donaldson and Nelson Cruz all homered, the first two coming off Mounds View High grad Hentges, and the Twins managed to win back-to-back games at Target Field for the first time in a month. The final score was 8-2 over Cleveland, sending the Twins out of town off a victory for the first time since mid-April.
Hentges, whose most recent performance at Target Field was a complete-game shutout in the Class 3A championship game in 2014, found the Twins' lineup more formidable than Eden Prairie's. The Cleveland rookie allowed a run in all four innings he pitched in, and walked a batter in each, too. Trevor Larnach's two-out single in the first inning scored Minnesota's first run, and home runs did the damage in innings two, three, or four.
Simmons knocked the first pitch he saw from Hentges, a slider in the middle of the plate, a half-dozen rows up in the left-field bleachers for two runs, his third homer of the year. Donaldson reached the upper deck to lead off the third inning, his 11th, and though Nelson Cruz's 17th home run, another upper-deck blast, came off fellow Cleveland rookie Justin Garza, it scored two runners he had put on base.
J.A. Happ recorded his first victory since May 29 by allowing two runs over six innings.
The Twins' victory was marred by a serious injury to Cleveland right fielder Josh Naylor, who scrambled forward in an effort to catch Jorge Polanco's check-swing blooper in the fourth inning.
Naylor collided with second baseman Ernie Clement as the ball fell in front of them. Naylor was knocked to the ground, but his right foot was caught underneath him, and he landed hard on top of it, likely breaking it. The 24-year-old outfielder immediately began rolling around the outfield in obvious and extreme pain as Cleveland trainers rushed to help.
Eventually paramedics were summoned as well, and an inflatable cast was administered to Naylor's right leg before he was taken off the field on a cart, then taken by ambulance to a nearby hospital.
