McAdam: Red Sox make the necessary adjustments at the plate and end trip with win

MINNEAPOLIS -- Alex Cora arrived in the dugout for his daily pre-game media availability yesterday morning, shortly after 10:30 Central time, and as he took his seat on the bench, noted that it would a challenge for the assembled reporters to come up with interesting questions.

After all, as Cora wryly noted, he had spoken with the same group only 12 or so hours earlier, and as the manager noted, not much had changed overnight and early Thursday morning.

But then, as it turns out, the Red Sox went out and played the final game of their long, three-city, three time zone, 10-game road trip, and in a very real sense, everything had changed.

The same team that had collected just four hits -- three of them singles -- in Wednesday's 4-1 loss suddenly cranked out 16 hits, including five for extra base.

The same team which seemed incapable of producing a big hit with runners in scoring position (0-for-9 Wednesday; 2-for-22 in the series to date; and 17-for-104 in their last 12 games) suddenly was ringing hard-hit balls all over Target Field, delivering clutch hit after clutch hit.

The same team which of late seemed incapable of adding on runs late to provide themselves with more breathing room -- and lived to regret it with some bullpen malfunctions cost them games -- took a tenuous 2-0 lead and tacked on three runs in the seventh, three more in the eighth and another in the ninth.

And the same team that was positively listless in the bottom third of their lineup (2-for-20 in the first two games against the Twins) was suddenly a productive force, getting five hits, two runs and two RBI from the last three spots in the batting order.

Add it all up, and the Red Sox cruised to an easy 9-2 victory over the Twins, providing them with yet another getaway game victory, and not incidentally, a winning record (6-4) for their two week odyssey across America.

The turnaround came at the top, too, with Mookie Betts, who had been quiet since returning to the lineup in Baltimore, having collected just one extra-base hit on the entire road trip before Thursday. But after singling in the first and popping up in the third, he crushed a pitch to right in the fifth inning, giving him his first homer in 26 at-bats.

"When Mookie's going, obviously, we go,'' said Cora. "It's good to see him swing the bat well.''

Betts had watched some video Thursday morning and detected a mechanical glitch in his swing, which he declined to identify.

"We sat down (with hitting coach Tim Hyers) and talked for a couple of minutes and it made a lot of sense to me,'' offered Betts.

If Betts set the tone, there was more to come throughout the lineup. Andrew Benintendi had a single and a homer of his own. J.D Martinez singled and doubled later in the game. Xander Bogaerts smacked a two-run double to key a three-run seventh.

For the past few days, Cora had been preaching about the need for Red Sox hitters to stop expanding the zone and to hunt for pitches in the middle of the plate rather than chasing pitchers' pitches on the edges of the plate. The Sox had been getting their opportunities -- starter Lance Lynn walked five in five innings Wednesday night  -- but the Sox were too impatient to capitalize.

In his pre-game session Thursday morning, Cora had also stressed the need for the Sox to simply put the ball in play more.  They had fanned 10 times on Tuesday night, and though that number had cut back to five in Wednesday's loss, the art of making productive outs seemed to have been lost.

That, too, got corrected in Thursday's romp. Rafael Devers, the only member of the starting lineup to go hitless, nonetheless contributed a groundball to second with the Xander Bogaerts at third with one out in the seven, delivering another add-on run for the Sox.

It was, tellingly, the first thing that Cora chose to highlight post-game.

"For everything that went on offensively,'' said Cora, "there was an at-bat that people won't talk about. It was man at third, less than two outs, infield in, and Raffy put the ball in play. That's what we were talking about (earlier). If we put up quality at-bats like that, we're going to score a lot of runs.''

The way they had for most of the season, until the last week.