Canadian Edouard Julien hits two homers to lift Twins over White Sox

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MINNEAPOLIS — The Chicago White Sox dropped to 3-22, wasting a two-run lead and stretching their losing streak to a season-high seven with a 6-3 defeat to Minnesota on Thursday as Edouard Julien hit two of the Twins’ five solo home runs.

Chicago matched Cincinnati in 2022, Detroit in 2003 and Washington in 1894 as teams that opened 3-22. Baltimore began 2-23 in 1988.

Julien and Ryan Jeffers homered off Michael Soroka in a three-run sixth inning, Julien homered again off John Brebbia in the seventh and Carlos Santana and Jose Miranda went deep against Steven Wilson in the eighth.

Chicago, off to the worst start in franchise history, has been outscored 141-56 and allowed 38 home runs.

“There’s no lack of effort that’s going into turning this thing around,” said Soroka, who pitched five shutout innings before faltering. “It seems like right now it’s one thing or another that we can’t quite piece together and play that complete game. I believe things will turn around. I believe this group is definitely making the effort to do that.”

Minnesota swept the four-game series, its longest winning streak since winning five straight from last Aug. 3-7.

“It was a really good series for us,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. “We wanted to get a lot of things in order this week at home and play well. We were able to do much of it.”

Andrew Vaughn and Korey Lee each had two hits for the White Sox, who wasted a 2-0 lead.

Julien and Jeffers homered on consecutive pitches in sixth, and Trevor Larnach, Max Kepler and Willi Castro hit consecutive singles against Tanner Banks (0-2) for a 3-2 advantage.

“Hitting is contagious, one way or the other,” Jeffers said. “If it’s going bad, it’s going bad for everybody. If it’s good, it becomes contagious that way, too. I think we can build off this for sure.”

Twins starter Simeon Woods Richardson gave up two runs and seven hits in five-plus innings while fanning six in his second start of the season.

Cole Sands (1-0) pitched a hitless inning for his first major league win. The 26-year-old right-hander was 0-3 in 2022, his only prior big league decisions. Griffin Jax got two outs for his fourth save as Chicago scored an unearned run.

Kevin Pillar hit a sacrifice fly in the second and Paul DeJong an RBI single in the fourth off Woods Richardson, who stranded two runners in scoring position in both the second and fourth innings.

Julien’s two homers gave him a team-high seven, among the top 10 in the major leagues.

“There’s going to be times where I’m going to hit four in one week, and there’s months where I’m not going to go through with home runs,” said Julien, who hit 16 home runs in 408 plate appearances last season. “For me, I’m more of a complete hitter than a power hitter, and my goal is just to get on base and help the team win.”

UP NEXT

White Sox: RHP Chris Flexen (0-3, 6.41 ERA) will start on Friday at home against Tampa Bay. Flexen’s last two outings have come in relief after he gave up 13 earned runs in 13 1/3 innings over his first three starts.

Twins: RHP Bailey Ober (1-1, 4.91) will face the Los Angeles Angels on Friday in the opener of a three-game series at Anaheim. In his last three starts, Ober has allowed just two earned runs in 17 innings.