In hot stretch, Brewers look to sweep struggling Twins

The Milwaukee Brewers would be happy to belt a home run or two in Sunday's series finale against the Minnesota Twins in Minneapolis.

It's not entirely necessary, however. The Brewers have proved that through the first two games of the series, during which they scored 26 runs without hitting a homer.

Nonetheless, Milwaukee will go for a three-game sweep when the teams meet.

"Overall, it's our identity as a team," Brewers infielder Caleb Durbin said. "We're going to take advantage of the little things like baserunning and playing solid defense.

"We've been able to do that, and we were able to do that the last couple of days. I think it's been the separator for us."

Meanwhile, the Twins are eager to produce any kind of offense, no matter what it looks like. Minnesota was blanked 9-0 on Saturday after dropping the series opener 17-6 on Friday.

The Twins will try to bounce back after committing two errors that led to three unearned runs on Saturday. There were other miscues as well, and the game ended after Brooks Lee declined to run to first base on a dropped third strike with two outs in the ninth.

"You want to sum it up in one word, it's embarrassing," Twins catcher Ryan Jeffers said. "We're big league ballplayers, and we're not playing like a big league ballclub. We can't expect to win baseball games and play like that."

Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said the only way to break out of the slump was to refocus.

"We should probably call it how we're seeing it," Baldelli said. "Of course, we're in a bit of a rut right now. We're seeing it in a few different ways. You can't hide from it. You have to acknowledge it and move forward."

Brewers right-hander Quinn Priester (5-2, 3.46 ERA) will try to continue his recent hot stretch. He is 4-0 with a 1.86 ERA in his past five starts, and he has issued only four walks during that span while striking out 21.

This will be Priester's first career start against the Twins.

Minnesota will counter with right-hander David Festa (1-1, 4.78), who is slated to make his seventh start of the season and 20th of his career. He will try to bounce back from a short-lived outing Tuesday against the Cincinnati Reds, who chased him after scoring four runs (two earned) over 3 2/3 innings in a 6-5 Reds win.

Festa has never pitched against the Brewers.

Milwaukee is a season-high seven games above .500 after winning three games in a row and six of its past eight. The Brewers were three games under .500 on May 24 but have gone 17-7 since thanks to a combination of pitching, defense and timely hitting.

Brewers manager Pat Murphy joked that his team's 26 runs in two days without a home run provided another lesson.

"Probably should get in the weight room," he said. "I like homers a lot. Let's make no mistake about it. But it's swinging at strikes, taking balls and keeping the pressure on the other team."