A pair of eight-game winners will oppose each other on Sunday afternoon when the Minnesota Twins meet the Los Angeles Angels in the finale of a three-game series in Minneapolis.
The Twins will send Taj Bradley (8-3, 3.67 ERA) to the mound against fellow right-hander Jose Soriano (8-5, 3.40).
Neither player is an All-Star selection, but both have pitched well. Bradley is 43 strikeouts shy of breaking his career high of 154, set in 2024 with the Tampa Bay Rays.
Bradley hasn’t lost a game in more than a month, and he’s lasted seven innings in two of his last three starts. He has a 3.18 ERA without a decision in two career starts against the Angels.
Soriano won five consecutive starts to begin this season but has tapered off since. In his last start on Tuesday, he allowed two runs on two hits in six innings in a no-decision vs. the Texas Rangers as the Angels lost 8-3.
Soriano is 0-2 with an 8.22 ERA in three career appearances against the Twins. His 51 walks this season are the most in the American League, but he has 115 strikeouts.
The Angels will look to bounce back from a 5-3 loss on Saturday, The Twins pulled ahead in the seventh inning against left-hander Mitch Farris, who yielded consecutive hits to Royce Lewis, Victor Caratini and Alan Roden.
“We liked the matchup with the changeup, and (Farris) just left the ball up and got hit,” Angels manager Kurt Suzuki said.
Infielder Zach Neto enters the series finale with 20 doubles and 19 home runs for the season. Should he homer on Sunday, Neto would become the eighth player in Angels history to have 20 doubles and 20 home runs before the All-Star break, joining Don Baylor (1979), Troy Glaus (2000-01), Garret Anderson (2003), Vladimir Guerrero (2004), Mike Trout (2014), Jared Walsh (2021) and Taylor Ward (2025).
The Twins already have their most home runs and walks in a first half of the season in the past five years. They’ve hit 119 home runs and drawn 320 walks.
Minnesota is seeking its fifth straight series win, which would mark the team’s longest such streak since winning five straight series from May 2-18, 2025. The last Twins’ series win over the Angels was April 25-27, 2025.
Minnesota (47-49) can’t get to .500 with a win Sunday but can keep pace in the American League Central, where the team is in third place and only three games out of first.
The biggest missing piece for the Twins is All-Star outfielder Byron Buxton, who is on the 10-day injured list with a strained right hip. Buxton will get the next few days to rest and heal, as he will not play in the All-Star Game on Tuesday in Philadelphia.
That could line him up to return when the schedule resumes for Minnesota on Friday.
“The greatest strength of Byron Buxton is how much he is a team-first person,” manager Derek Shelton recently told the Minnesota Star Tribune. “When we started to talk about where his body was at, where we’re at in the schedule, and how he felt, ultimately we came to the decision that this was best.”
–Field Level Media
