ST. LOUIS (KFGO) \u2014 Michael A. Taylor and Ryan Jeffers each hit a two-run homer, and the AL Central-leading Minnesota Twins beat the St. Louis Cardinals 5-3 on Thursday night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Twins took two of three from the Cardinals and increased their division lead to 2 1\/2 games over idle Cleveland. Minnesota has won just twice in its last eight games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sonny Gray (5-4) picked up the win in his first start with the Twins, giving up two runs and five hits in seven innings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jhoan Duran gave up a leadoff single in the ninth to Alex Burleson, his third hit in a 3-for-4 night. Burleson scored on a ground out. After a two-out infield single, Duran struck out Taylor Motter to pick up his 19th save.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Matthew Liberatore (1-4) pitched 5 2\/3 innings before chased with the bases loaded in the sixth. Drew Verhagen issued a walk to Taylor for a run before getting a strikeout to end the threat. Liberatore allowed five earned runs and six hits with two walks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Minnesota stung Liberatore with two, two-run home runs in the second. Jeffers homered to center field to score Edouard Julien. Willie Castro followed with a double off Liberatore\u2019s foot as the ball caromed into short left field. After stealing third, he walked home when Taylor hit a 3-0 pitch into Big Mac Land in the third deck in left field for a 4-0 lead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
St. Louis got a run back in the second when Dylan Carlson sliced a double to left, scoring Tommy Edman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Alec Burleson hit a one-out home run into the right-field bullpen, cutting the Twins lead to 5-2. Burleson hit a three-run homer in Wednesday\u2019s loss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ST. LOUIS (KFGO) \u2014 Michael A. Taylor and Ryan Jeffers each hit a two-run homer, and the AL Central-leading Minnesota Twins beat the St. Louis Cardinals 5-3 on Thursday night. The Twins took two of three from the Cardinals and increased their division lead to 2 1\/2 games over idle […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":92812,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-274453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=274453"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":274457,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274453\/revisions\/274457"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/92812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=274453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=274453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=274453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}