Josh Donaldson hit a two-run homer in the first inning and Andrew Albers pitched 5 1/3 shutout innings to earn his first major league victory in four seasons as the Minnesota Twins blanked the Milwaukee Brewers, 2-0, on Friday night in Minneapolis.

Max Kepler doubled, stole a base and had two hits and Andrelton Simmons also had two hits for Minnesota, which improved to 3-1 against the National League Central Division-leading Brewers this season.

Albers (1-0), who pitched the last three seasons with the Orix Buffaloes in Japan's Nippon Professional Baseball, allowed just three singles and a walk to earn the victory. It was his first major league start since Sept. 30, 2017, when he was a member of the Seattle Mariners, and the 35-year-old left-hander's first major league win since Sept. 14, 2017 at Texas.

Alex Colome struck out two of the three batters he faced in the ninth inning to pick up his eighth save.

Kolten Wong had two hits and Lorenzo Cain had a double for Milwaukee, which saw its NL Central lead fall to 7 1/2 games over Cincinnati, a 6-0 winner at Miami earlier Thursday.

Eric Lauer (4-5) suffered the loss, allowing two runs on six hits over 4 2/3 innings. He walked two and struck out six.

Minnesota, coming off a 1-5 road trip to New York and Boston capped by a 12-2 loss to the Red Sox on Thursday night, jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the first inning.

Rob Refsnyder reached first on a two-out infield single off the glove of first baseman Rowdy Tellez and Donaldson followed with a line drive homer into the left field bleachers, his 20th home run of the season and fourth in the last six games. It marked the seventh time in Donaldson's career that he has hit 20 or more homers in a season.

The Twins had a chance to break the game open in the second when they loaded the bases with one-out on singles by Willians Astudillo and Simmons and a walk by Byron Buxton, who was activated before the game after missing 55 games with a broken left hand. But Lauer got out of the jam with back-to-back strikeouts of Jorge Polanco and Refsnyder.

Milwaukee loaded the bases with two outs in the fourth but Albers got Jace Peterson to ground out to end the threat.

--Field Level Media