MINNEAPOLIS -- Make it 11.

After the offense carried this winning streak into the double digits on an explosive -- and, well, protein-packed -- road trip, it was Chris Paddack and the pitching staff that also stepped up to drag that streak to nearly unseen heights by stifling the Red Sox in Minnesota’s 5-2, series-opening victory on Friday.

“I wasn’t going to be the guy that ended the streak,” Paddack said. “Made it personal out there.”

The Twins’ 11-game winning streak is now tied for the third-longest in club history, matching a run last accomplished from June 22-July 3, 2006. Another win on Saturday -- with ace Pablo López facing a Boston bullpen game -- would make it their longest streak since 1991.

The 2024 Twins are now four wins shy of the 15-game streak set by that World Series-winning ‘91 club that still stands as the team record.

“I don't think anybody in this clubhouse is counting, ‘What number are we on?’” Ryan Jeffers said. “It's fun winning baseball games and we keep doing it and finding different ways to win.”

As the Twins returned home for the first time since their streak evolved into more of a Streak with a capital S, the first-base clubhouse at Target Field was littered with signs of the weirdness and goofiness that has taken hold of the organization since these winning ways started on April 22.

Some credit has gone to the summer sausage that seems to be the team’s unofficial rallying point, with cured meat paraphernalia having invaded the clubhouse -- sausage T-shirts, snack sticks and even a 15-foot flag poking through the tiled ceiling of the coaches’ locker room, with none of the coaches staring at it from their office chairs around the room seeming quite sure what to do with it.

Credit is also due to the looser fun this team is now having, embodied by the goofy Polaroid selfie of Jhoan Duran (and only Duran) affixed to the clubhouse wall to mark the win, taken as what was meant to be a team photo on the field as part of the team’s new victory celebration.

But on Friday, the credit just went to good, old-fashioned pitching dominance.

Perhaps the biggest uncertainty amid this stretch of winning had been Paddack’s continued inconsistency to start the season, coming off a second career Tommy John surgery to join a rotation for the first time in two years.

But he was at his best as he held the Sox to two hits in six scoreless frames, capping his outing by fanning the side in the sixth to reach six strikeouts, an encouraging figure given his difficulty in generating two-strike whiffs in many of his appearances early this season. With two scoreless efforts at home in Paddack’s last three outings, he’s trending up alongside the rest of his team.

“If you’re going to win a bunch of games in a row, they’re not all going to be the same type of baseball game,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. “But to roll out there and have one of your guys just kind of step up and go six shutout innings the way that Paddack did, it sets a tone.”

The two-strike pitch Paddack sought all season ended up being his fastball, responsible for four of his six strikeouts on Friday, including the 95.9 mph pitch he blew past Tyler O’Neill before he yelled into the air to finish his 83-pitch outing, finally satisfied with his entire arsenal in a way that had eluded him as he began the season with a 5.88 ERA in his first five starts.

An argument could be made for the 10-strikeout start in seven scoreless innings against the White Sox two outings ago -- but Paddack pointed to how the arsenal was working so well on Friday that he didn’t even really need his signature changeup, thrown only on 13 percent of his pitches.

“It’s fun out there when all of your pitches click and are working and you’re able to save [the changeup],” Paddack said.

The offense did arrive late thanks to a four-run outburst in the seventh that gave the Twins five or more runs scored in all but one of the contests of this 11-game streak, and that frame featured the kinds of plays that just seem to go a team’s way when it’s on a heater like this: a run-scoring, errant throw on a sacrifice bunt attempt, and a bases-loaded walk on a pitch clock violation.

With that, the streak rolls on.