Cubs exact revenge on Twins with 8-1 romp at Target Field

The newly named All-Star homered twice, and the big weekday crowd roared as their favorites ran up the score Thursday, finally settling for an 8-1 victory. What a gorgeous afternoon at Wrigley Field North.

Yeah, it was a lot less exciting for Twins fans, seemingly outnumbered in their own ballpark by thousands of Chicagoans intoxicated by the Cubs’ hold on first place and Pete Crow-Armstrong’s charge toward superstardom. The third-year outfielder, headed to Atlanta next week for All-Star festivities, cracked a 414-foot homer to straightaway center field off Chris Paddack in the third inning, then outdid that one with a 425-footer into the right-field seats in the seventh.

“I’ve seen it before,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said of the go-Cubs-go atmosphere among the announced 34,391 customers at Target Field, the ballpark’s second-biggest crowd of the season. The volume was amplified, perhaps, because the visitors had so few reasons to cheer in the first two games, both Twins wins. “Obviously you want your own people swarming the stadium — that always helps in a big way. But every once in a while, it happens and you just deal with it.”

The Twins had far more trouble dealing with Chicago starter Colin Rea, anyway. Kody Clemens was the only Twins player able to counter Crow-Armstrong’s big day, and his 406-foot line drive over the right field wall, his team’s only run of the afternoon, was the rare Clemens homer to have little impact. Coming with the Twins trailing by six runs, Clemens’ 11th home run of the season was only the fourth that didn’t tie the score or give the Twins a lead.

Besides that slip, Rea had few problems with the Twins, who had scored four or more runs in all five games of the homestand. Rea only gave up two other hits over seven innings, walked two and retired the final eight batters he faced.

BOXSCORE: Cubs 8, Twins 1

MLB standings

“He didn’t make too many mistakes at all. Unfortunately, in this game you’ve got to wait for mistakes, that’s how hard it is to hit,” Royce Lewis said. “Once they got him out of there, I was happy — even when they brought in the guy throwing 100 [mph],” reliever Daniel Palencia.

Given the slumber by his offense and a rough day for Paddack, Baldelli preferred to focus on the series, and the homestand, as a whole. The Twins took two out of three from the 55-win Cubs, just as they did to the 50-win Rays over the weekend, after they hadn’t won a series for a month to fall below .500.

“We got beat today, but I was pleased with the way we competed in this series. We made a lot of big pitches, big plays, had a lot of good swings when we needed them,” Baldelli said. “That’s against two really good teams. None of them have come easily — you have to earn them. I was pleased with what I’ve seen.”

Just perhaps not as pleased as those rowdy Cubs fans.

For three consecutive innings starting in the second, Cubs hitters hammered one-out doubles, and in all three innings, those runners eventually scored with two outs. Nico Hoerner drove home Dansby Swanson with a second-inning single, and Crow-Armstrong’s first home run, just out of reach of a leaping Harrison Bader at the center field fence, scored Kyle Tucker in the third.

Matt Shaw’s sacrifice fly brought home Carson Kelly, who doubled on a fly ball that fell between Harrison Bader and Matt Wallner in the fourth, and though there was no double to start another rally in the fifth, five consecutive Cubs reached base on four singles and a walk, producing two more runs.

“I won’t get too caught up with what happened in the game today. We didn’t get too many swings-and-misses out there from Paddy,” Baldelli said. “He kept going at them. He threw strikes. It’s not like he was out there walking people, but there were some tough at-bats for him today.”

On to the last-place Pirates, who close the season’s first half at Target Field beginning Friday. It will be a matchup of All-Star starters, with Joe Ryan facing last year’s NL Rookie of the Year, Paul Skenes, and presumably far fewer non-Twins fans in the ballpark.

“We get Skenes tomorrow, [so it’s] certainly not going to be any easier,” Baldelli said. “But with the way we’re going, we feel good about our chances of winning another series.”