Buxton's 2-homer game fuels Twins' rout of Brewers

Byron Buxton hit two home runs and Miguel Sano also homered to lead a 15-hit attack as the visiting Minnesota Twins cruised to a 12-2 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers on Wednesday night in the rubber game of a three-game series.

Byron Buxton hit two home runs and Miguel Sano also homered to lead a 15-hit attack as the visiting Minnesota Twins cruised to a 12-2 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers on Wednesday night in the rubber game of a three-game series. Buxton finished 3-for-5, Mitch Garver had three hits and scored twice, and Marwin Gonzalez and Luis Arraez each added two hits for the Twins, who led 11-0 after five innings. All nine Minnesota starters had a hit by the fourth inning.

Kenta Maeda (3-0) retired the first 11 batters he faced and held the Brewers to just a Christian Yelich single over the first five innings while garnering his third win in four starts. He allowed two runs on five hits and a walk over 6 2/3 innings while striking out five. Eric Lauer (0-2) gave up seven runs on nine hits in 3 2/3 innings. Milwaukee's Luis Urias had two hits and two RBIs, and Justin Smoak had a single and a double.

Minnesota jumped out to a 5-0 lead in the second inning thanks to five hits, including an RBI double by Jake Cave and RBI singles by Arraez, Jorge Polanco, and Nelson Cruz. Another run scored on a Lauer wild pitch. Sano made it 6-0 in the third with a towering 442-foot shot to left, his fourth of the season.

After Gonzalez boosted the lead to 7-0 with an RBI double in the fourth, the Twins broke the game open with a four-run fifth that featured a solo home run by Buxton, bases-loaded walks to Cruz and Eddie Rosario and a sacrifice fly by Gonzalez. Buxton made it 12-0 with his second home run of the game leading off the sixth, the second multi-homer game of his career.

The Brewers cut it to 12-2 in the sixth on a two-run single by Urias, driving in Eric Sogard, who had singled, and Keston Hiura, who had doubled. Jedd Gyorko, whose two-run homer in the eighth inning Tuesday gave Milwaukee a 6-4 victory, pitched a scoreless ninth inning, allowing only a leadoff single by Mitch Garver.