Polanco, Twins working their walk-off 'mojo'

MINNEAPOLIS -- Close games are usually won with strong pitching and tight defense. The Twins got only one of those but emerged victorious anyway, thanks to another pinch of late-innings magic from walk-off whisperer Jorge Polanco.

Fresh off series victories against the Astros, White Sox and Rays, Minnesota continued its hot streak with a second straight walk-off win on Monday night, with Polanco's two-out double in the bottom of the 10th providing a 5-4 win over Cleveland at Target Field.

Minnesota has now won eight of its last 11 games -- including walk-offs by Polanco on back-to-back days.

“We didn’t play the cleanest game today, but we kept giving ourselves opportunities, and again, when you get guys in scoring position in tight ballgames, you need someone to get a big hit, and today it was Polo going out there,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “Another big moment for him, and we needed it. We needed someone to come up big and make it decisive, and he did.”

If anyone has earned a walk-off-oriented nickname at this point, it’s Polanco, who became the first Twins player with walk-offs in consecutive games since Jacque Jones did it against the Orioles on July 19-20, 2005.

In fact, Polanco’s double off Cleveland reliever Nick Wittgren marked his fourth walk-off of the season, making him the first Minnesota player with that many in a year since Kent Hrbek had five in 1987.

“Seeing everything click for him like it has the past month or so has been really fun,” catcher Ryan Jeffers said. “He's been swinging the bat really good. We feel really good when he's up there. Really, up and down the lineup, we feel really confident with everybody right now.”

The last time the Twins claimed consecutive walk-off victories was Sept. 13-14, 2017, when they did it against the Padres and Blue Jays.

Polanco’s heroics gave Minnesota the victory despite a game full of missed opportunities on offense and too many opportunities given away on defense. The Twins couldn’t come through with runners in scoring position for most of the contest and matched a season high with four errors in the early innings, but an airtight effort from their new-look bullpen kept them locked in a 4-4 tie, featuring scoreless frames from John Gant, Juan Minaya, Alex Colomé and Caleb Thielbar.

That set up the 10th-inning rally started by a leadoff single from Nick Gordon, who had been recalled from Triple-A St. Paul earlier in the afternoon. Max Kepler was intentionally walked before Rob Refsnyder grounded into a rare 5-2 double play with outs recorded at third and home -- but it didn’t matter when Polanco roped a liner over the head of the first baseman for his second straight walk-off winner.

“The fact that we hit into a double play, don't win the game at the moment that you think you might, it makes Polo's at-bat all the more impressive, to go out there and, again, like he's been doing, getting a good pitch to hit, whacking it,” Baldelli said.

Minnesota’s offense created plenty of opportunities, with base hits in every frame, but the club was 0-for-7 with runners in scoring position through the first eight innings, stranding men at second base in the third, fourth, seventh and eighth. The Twins even loaded the bases in the ninth, with help from a Cleveland throwing error, but once again stranded all aboard.

The Twins haven’t been playing with much margin for error in this recent stretch of schedule against stronger opponents, and the defense didn’t do much to help the cause. Two of those four errors were costly. Jake Cave’s error in the fifth and Andrelton Simmons’ misplay in the sixth both resulted in unearned runs charged to rookie starter Griffin Jax -- with the latter giving Cleveland a lead.

But as they have so often this month, the Twins found some timely hits. The first came from Jeffers, who crushed a hanging cutter a Statcast-projected 427 feet over the center-field fence in the sixth to tie the game, 4-4, just after Simmons’ run-scoring error. Jeffers’ 11th homer of the season is the most by a Twins rookie catcher, surpassing Butch Wynegar’s 10 in 1976 and ‘77.

And though it took four more innings for Minnesota to find the decisive knock, the bullpen bridged the gap -- and yet again, Polanco got it done.

“I think we’re clicking on all phases of the game right now,” Josh Donaldson said. “Today was kind of, from the defensive aspect of it, not probably our best performance. But besides that, hitting and pitching, our pitching continues to kind of bail us out there.”

“There's just some better mojo going on right now,” Jeffers added. “We're having fun. We're playing loose. We're all pulling in the right direction right now.”