With Chris Paddack traded and the clock seemingly ticking on a few of his teammates, Monday felt like the first day of Spoiler Season for the Twins. They\u2019ll play 40 of their final 56 games, after all, against teams that currently occupy a playoff spot or are within four games of one, so the opportunity to break a few hearts over the season\u2019s final two months seems enormous.<\/p>\n
And it only got bigger Monday.<\/p>\n
DaShawn Keirsey Jr. cracked his second homer of the season and, after the teams waited out a 90-minute thunderstorm, sparked a ninth-inning rally with a leadoff single. Brooks Lee finished off that rally with a walk-off single, and the Twins pulled off one of their unlikeliest victories of the season, 5-4 over the Red Sox at Target Field.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s enough to make the home team reject the whole notion of Spoiler Season. Who says it\u2019s over?<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat just happened today, that can happen. You can make it happen. And our guys made it happen today,\u201d Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. \u201cThose wins, they feel very satisfying because they\u2019re different. When you get pushed into a situation that\u2019s not normal, that maybe makes you a little uncomfortable, that throws your routine off, and you still find a way to get it done, it feels good.\u201d<\/p>\n
It sure did for Lee, who lofted a looping line drive down the left field line, scoring Mickey Gasper and Willi Castro with the game-winning runs before a crowd of only a few dozen fans remaining from the 24,443 who paid to see it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe still knew we were going to play at some point tonight,\u201d Lee said. \u201cA lot of guys were in the clubhouse. Those are the times when you come together and figure it out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Keirsey\u2019s single, which gave him his first two-hit night of his career, got things rolling against Boston reliever Jordan Hicks. Keirsey pulled a 98.4-mph fastball into right field, impressive since Hicks\u2019 fastball hits 98 and 99 mph. Was he surprised to pull it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With Chris Paddack traded and the clock seemingly ticking on a few of his teammates, Monday felt like…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44956,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,99],"class_list":["post-44955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44955\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}