TORONTO – The Twins are without 18 players on their 40-man roster thanks to the injured, COVID-19 and restricted lists. And yet with a patchwork team — including a couple Class AAA fill-ins — the Twins slapped five home runs and held the Blue Jays to six hitless and scoreless innings en route to a 9-3 victory at Rogers Centre on Friday.
"Just proves to ourselves and everyone else that we're all ready," spot starter Chi Chi Gonzalez said of his minor league brethren. "We come here, we compete. We're going to help us win."
Of the 17 Twins players to take the field Friday, seven of them were not on the Opening Day Roster, plus Jharel Cotton, who has spent more time with the Saints than the Twins this season after starting with the MLB club.
Cotton earned the victory for his two perfect innings with two strikeouts. Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said the plan was always to have a bigger bullpen day, with Gonzalez going only three innings, in which he gave up Toronto's only four hits and three runs, including home runs to George Springer and Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
Jovani Moran was the first reliever out of the bullpen and struck out the side in the fourth but walked his first two batters in the fifth. That's the situation Cotton inherited and successfully conquered.
"He's a real quality option for us going forward," Baldelli said of Cotton. "… When he reins in all of his stuff and finds the zone and throws it over the white, he can really do some things. He's impressive."
Of course the five bullpen arms also benefited from a ton of run support. Kyle Garlick and Jose Miranda each hit two home runs, and Byron Buxton hit his first home run since May 15 and recorded his first multi-hit game since May 3. That helped end Toronto's eight-game winning streak, dropping the Blue Jays to 30-21. The Twins improved to 31-23 and remained 4½ games up in the AL Central.
Miranda, who was the Twins Minor League Player of the Year in 2021 and was demoted to the Saints for one day this week, said his comfort at the top level is "way higher" now than when he first came up in early May. Maybe it helps to have some familiar Saints' faces around the clubhouse, too.
"I was just pressuring myself, wanting to do too much," Miranda said. "And I've just got to learn that I've got to go out there and play the game like I used to do when I was in the minors and when I was young. "It feels good now."
In-game injuries
The Twins lost two players to injuries Friday: third baseman Gio Urshela and left fielder Garlick.
In the midst of Toronto picking him off at second in the fourth inning, Urshela pulled up short while trying to shift back toward the base. He stayed in the infield to finish out that inning, but Luis Arraez replaced him in the fifth. Baldelli said Urshela had a mid-arch right foot sprain.Garlick left in the bottom of the sixth, when Nick Gordon took his spot in the outfield. Baldelli called it a mild hamstring strain, noticed after Garlick's base hit at the top of that inning, when he seemed to be stretching out his leg before he was thrown out at second.
Celestino working back
Gilberto Celestino rejoined the Twins after recovering from COVID. Baldelli said Celestino will likely play in a game soon.
"He's doing good. He's got two full days of workouts behind him," Baldelli said. "The first day, he got through most of it, didn't quite finish everything that we had scheduled for him. I think he was a little gassed, really the first real full day that he's had. So the second day of workouts went a lot better."
The outfielder had another workout ahead of Friday's game and will run the bases Saturday before the team decides when to put him back in the lineup.
