Marcus Semien homered, tripled and doubled and scored twice, and Ramon Laureano continued his hot hitting with two doubles to lead the Oakland Athletics to a 5-3 victory over the Minnesota Twins on Friday night in Minneapolis.
Khris Davis also had two hits and two RBIs, and Matt Olson went 2-for-4 with an RBI for Oakland which improved to 14-3 against American League Central teams with its seventh victory in eight games overall.
Chris Bassitt (7-4) picked up his third win in four starts, allowing three runs (two earned) on five hits and two walks while also hitting two batters in five innings. He fanned two.
All-Star reliever Liam Hendriks picked up his seventh save with 1 2/3 innings of hitless relief, striking out three.
Marwin Gonzalez homered and Jason Castro had two hits for Minnesota, which saw its AL Central lead shrink to three games over the Cleveland Indians. Ryne Harper (3-2) took the loss allowing two runs on three hits in an inning of relief.
Semien led off the game with his 15th home run of the year, extending Oakland's consecutive-games streak with a homer to 19. Davis made it 2-0 later in the inning with an RBI single, driving in Mark Canha, who had singled and advanced to second on a walk by Laureano.
Minnesota cut it to 2-1 in the second when Miguel Sano walked with two outs, advanced to second on a single by Castro and then scored when Max Kepler's grounder bounced through the legs of first baseman Olson for an error, allowing Sano to score.
The Twins then took a 3-2 lead in the third on a two-run homer by Gonzalez, driving in Nelson Cruz, who was hit by a pitch to open the inning.
Oakland tied it in the fifth when Semien doubled and scored on a two-out single by Olson.
The A's took a 5-3 lead in the sixth. Laureano greeted Harper with a ground-rule double into the left field bleachers, his 10th hit in the span of 14 at-bats, and then scored on a single by Davis. Robbie Grossman then reached base on a fielder's choice, stole second and scored on Chad Pinder's two-out single to left.
--Field Level Media
