Twins hand Pirates first loss of season

PITTSBURGH — Brian Dozier homered for the third straight game, Miguel Sano drove in a pair of runs and the Minnesota Twins handed the Pittsburgh Pirates their first loss of the season with a 7-3 victory at frigid PNC Park on Wednesday night.

Dozier hit a drive off the top of the leftfield wall in the third inning for his fourth home run in four days. Sano finished 3 for 5 and started Minnesota’s four-run rally in the sixth with an RBI single. He added another run-scoring single in the seventh. Eduardo Escobar also drove in two runs for the Twins.

Taylor Rogers (1-0) got two outs in the fifth to pick up the win.

Josh Bell hit a 432foot home run through the snow flurries in the first inning for Pittsburgh. Corey Dickerson added two hits for the Pirates, but Pittsburgh’s attempt to start 5-0 for the first time since 1983 ended when the Twins jumped on Ivan Nova (0-1) and the bullpen in the sixth.

The Pirates were the last unbeaten team in the majors thanks to solid starting pitching and enough offense to compensate for a bullpen that remains very much a work in progress. DIAMONDBACKS 3, DODGERS 0: Patrick Corbin shut out Los Angeles on one hit in more than seven innings of work, striking out a career-high 12 for Arizona. The Diamondbacks swept the three-game series and won their ninth straight regularseason game against the Dodgers, going back to a pair of three-game series sweeps last season. Corbin (2-0) retired 14 batters in a row to start the game, eight on strikeouts. The Dodgers struggled to make solid contact, and it took Matt Kemp’s bloop double with two outs in the fifth to break up Corbin’s no-hit bid. Kemp had the Dodgers’ only hit of the game. YANKEES 7, RAYS 2: Giancarlo Stanton turned boos to cheers with his first Yankee Stadium home run in pinstripes, an emphatic go-ahead drive in the first inning to helo New York complete a twogame sweep. Stanton turned on a high slider from Blake Snell (0-1), driving the ball 458 feet to left field at 117.9 mph for a two-run homer with the hardest-hit ball in the major leagues so for this young season. METS 4, PHILLIES 2: Yoenis Cespedes homered, Amed Rosario hit a two-run triple and New York’s bullpen faced the minimum batters over five scoreless innings. New York swept the weather-shortened twogame series.