MINNEAPOLIS — Their postseason ambitions now just a mathematical asterisk, the Twins have embarked on the what-if portion of their season.
What if his teammates drove home runs as methodically as Jose Miranda? What if Matt Wallner had been given more than a two-week look? And especially, what if Bailey Ober had remained healthy all season?
Miranda cracked three hits and widened his team lead in RBIs and Wallner smashed the first Target Field home run of his career on Tuesday. But the pair of rookie hitters were overshadowed by their second-year teammate on the mound.
Ober retired the first 10 hitters he faced, racked up a career-high 10 strikeouts, including five in a row at one point, and pitched into the eighth inning for the first time in his career. In other words, the right-hander who led the Twins to a 4-0 whipping of the White Sox was exactly the pitcher his team was hoping would blossom this year.
He will presumably start the 2023 season healthy, his groin injury completely healed, so perhaps the pitcher that Twins have watched in his three starts since returning from the injured list will be a regular contributor next year. With his two-hit, one-walk shutout performance, Ober has posted a 1.56 ERA this month, with 18 strikeouts and just three walks.
The White Sox, who managed to advance zero hitters beyond first base all night against Ober, Griffin Jax and Jhoan Duran, swung and missed 20 of Ober's pitches, another career high.
Former Twins right-hander Lance Lynn didn't fare nearly as well in the 55-degree chill. The Twins strung three straight singles together in the second inning for their first run, scored again in the third inning on a pair of doubles, the second of them Miranda's team-high 65th run, and chased the veteran in the sixth when Gary Sanchez walked and Wallner drove Lynn's final pitch, a 2-0 fastball in the center of the plate, into the right-field seats, his second career home run.
Miranda, who didn't join the team until May and was batting below .200 until early June, has driven in 16.3% of the runners on base when he hits, a higher percentage than any Twin except Alex Kirilloff, who hasn't played in two months.
The victory moves the Twins within one game of Chicago for second place in the AL Central. They temporarily avoided mathematical elimination from the wild-card race, though perhaps only because the Mariners' home game with Texas had not yet finished.
