CHICAGO _ More than 23,000 energized White Sox fans showed up for Michael Kopech's debut on Tuesday. Only a few hundred remained by the time the Twins spoiled the party with a 5-2 victory at Guaranteed Rate Field.
Kopech, the much-hyped pitching prospect who was acquired from Boston in the Chris Sale trade, didn't last much longer than Stephen Gonsalves' did a day earlier, thanks to a sudden summer shower. He threw 52 pitches, most of them at 97 mph, and struck out four, with the crowd roaring at his every move. They cheered him from the moment he stepped out of the dugout to warm up, after all.
But a rain delay of nearly an hour forced Kopech out of the game, and the Twins finally broke a tie in the ninth inning. Eddie Rosario singled home Mitch Garver with the go-ahead run, Jorge Polanco singled home Joe Mauer and Rosario, and Minnesota opened a road trip with a victory for only the second time all season.
Jose Berrios pitched five innings, lasting through the rain delay to hold the White Sox to only one run, on Nicky Delmonico's solo home run.
The Twins, who had scored nearly all their runs on home runs over the past five days, instead relied on crafty baserunning to take the lead on Tuesday. With one out in the fourth inning, three consecutive singles, the last by Robbie Grossman, produced one run to tie the score, and left Jake Cave on third base and Grossman on first. With Bobby Wilson at bat, Grossman then took off for second base _ and stopped halfway, allowing himself to get into a rundown.
As White Sox first baseman Matt Davidson finally tracked down Grossman and tagged him out, Cave broke for the plate and easily beat Davidson's throw, giving the Twins a 2-1 lead.
Behind the strong pitching of Berrios and Gabriel Moya, that lead held up into the seventh inning, with no White Sox baserunner advancing past first base. But after retiring five of the first six batters he faced, Moya finally slipped up against Yoan Moncada _ who, like Kopech, came to Chicago in the Chris Sale trade. A hanging curveball on a 1-1 count wound up in the left-field seats, tying the game on Moncada's 16th home run.
The Twins worked out of some trouble of their own making in the eighth inning, with Trevor May striking out Yolmer Sanchez and Davidson to keep the game at 2-2 despite two errors in the inning. After Adam Engel singled to lead off the inning, May had him picked off. But Engel broke for second base, and as Mauer ran him toward second base, Logan Forsythe jumped out of the way just as Mauer tossed toward the base. Forsythe couldn't catch it, and Polanco wasn't on the base, so the ball fell to the ground and Engel was safe.
Tim Anderson followed with a sacrifice bunt, but May slipped on the rain-soaked grass and threw wildly to first base. Mauer retrieved the ball and caught Engel trying to score; when he stopped and got into a rundown, Anderson advance to third before Engel could be tagged. May's strikeouts ended the danger, however, and the pitcher pumped his fist in celebration as he walked off the field.
