Box Score
SP: Taj Bradley – 5 IP, 8 H, 4 ER, 1 BB, 7 K (91 pitches, 59 strikes)
Home Runs: Wallner (21), Clemens (15)
Bottom 3 WPA: Travis Adams (-.392), Génesis Cabrera (-.227), Bradley (-.189)
Win Probability Chart (via FanGraphs)
There should be a mercy rule for games like these—one that can kick in before the first pitch is even thrown. When two teams in the throes of seasons as dreadful as those of the 2025 White Sox and Twins are delayed by rain for 90 minutes, everyone should get to draw a picture that tells the story of how they imagine the game would have gone, and no one should have to sit through the reality of that game. Rob Manfred has no imagination, though, and the Twins are desperate for every dollar they can scrape out of a season in which attendance is going to come in far below expectations.
Thus, the White Sox and Twins did play a game Thursday night, closing out their season series and a four-game set at Target Field. It began at 8:10 PM, and while the official attendance was over 13,000, a better estimate of the fans in attendance would start by chopping off a zero and moving the comma accordingly.
To the credit of both teams, they came out trying to give that bedraggled, disinterested crowd some interesting baseball to watch. Edgar Quero led off for the Sox, and after working a long at-bat against Taj Bradley, he flared a single down the left-field line. The ball died on the wet grass, and Quero decided to push for a hustle double. Austin Martin, moving well despite the slick surface, fielded the ball cleanly and made a good throw to nail Quero at second. That’s a job well done, bv all parties involved, and it was fun to watch. Bradley took care of business to finish a clean first.
Brooks Baldwin returned the favor to lead off the bottom of the first. Luke Keaschall tried to land a similar fly ball down the right-field line, but Baldwin raced over and made a diving catch near the line. Hopefully, the fans enjoyed those good plays, because things got sloppy quickly thereafter. Trevor Larnach singled after Keaschall, but was then picked off. Ryan Jeffers walked and Kody Clemens singled, but Royce Lewis struck out to quash the rally.
Bradley didn’t have the Sox fooled at all, all night. He danced around two hits in the second, but gave up three more hits and a walk in the third, leading to the first two runs of the night for the White Sox. Keaschall singled in the bottom of the third and advanced on a Cannon error, then stole third, but he was stranded. Bradley gave up a leadoff double in the fourth, too, although he was able to escape without allowing a run.
In the bottom of the fourth, though, the Twins broke through. Walks by Matt Wallner and Martin got things started, and then a parade of singles brought home a scoreboard-flipping five runs. That required a lousy play by the Sox on a chopper to first base by Larnach, and it was made a bit less thrilling by the fact that Mickey Gasper pinch-hit for Jeffers (who had taken multiple foul balls off the mask earlier in the game) during the sequence, but still, the Twins had grabbed the lead.
The Sox got one more run, thanks to yet another double, against Bradley in the fifth. Wallner swatted a home run in the bottom half of the frame to push the lead back to two runs, though, at 6-4. In the seventh, Minnesota tacked on another run, as Keaschall (on base seemingly all night, even after being robbed in the first) raced to third on a Larnach bloop single and came home on a Gasper groundout.
It takes more than three runs to be comfortable against this mighty White Sox lineup, though—at least, it does for this husk of a Twins pitching staff. Three batters into the top of the seventh, the lead was gone, as two singles and a Kyle Teel home run off Travis Adams put a crooked number up in a hurry. One batter later, Adams was out of the game, but Génesis Cabrera proved a poor fireman. A combination of two hit batsmen, a sacrifice fly and a balk put two more White Sox runs on the board, and the Twins were working from behind again.
They never did make it back. Keaschall had another hit in the seventh (he got the smallest piece possible of a two-strike slider but the dribbler proved too much for Teel), but went nowhere. In the top of the eighth, Lewis committed a throwing error, and Colson Montgomery immediately made that hurt by thwacking his umpteenth home run against the Twins in the last month. Clemens homered in the ninth, but the game ended in a hush, near midnight, 11-8.
What’s Next?
The Twins hit the road for three games against surging Wild Card hopefuls in Kansas City this weekend. Pablo López rides to the rescue, returning to the mound for the first time since early June. (There’s nothing left to save, of course, but there’s a bit of joy in seeing López fight his way back.) Michael Wacha will take the ball for the Royals, in a game that starts at 6:40 PM CT.
Bullpen Usage Spreadsheet
SUN
MON
TUE
WED
THU
TOT
Kriske
0
0
27
0
0
27
Hatch
0
0
64
0
0
64
Cabrera
0
20
0
0
20
40
Tonkin
37
0
0
0
11
48
Topa
0
17
0
18
0
35
Davis
0
0
33
0
25
58
Funderburk
0
31
0
0
0
31
Sands
0
0
0
18
0
18
Adams
0
6
0
0
31
37