100 Club: Buxton slugs career milestone HR

MINNEAPOLIS -- Byron Buxton hasn’t had the most straightforward path to 100 homers, to say the least, in myriad ways -- but on Tuesday night, he finally hit that milestone, perhaps a symbol of his new status as the slugging anchor of this lineup for years to come.

It’s only fitting that the 100th homer was a 423-foot tape-measure blast off White Sox right-hander Lance Lynn to the bullpens in left field to tie the game at 2 in the bottom of the first inning at Target Field. Buxton once struggled to find his identity at the plate, but he has now become known for such moonshots -- a game-changing presence for one of the sport’s most electric players.

“I didn’t think I was going to hit 100,” Buxton said. “Thought I’d have more stolen bases, to be honest. I’m excited. Especially to do it all in a Twins uniform, it’s special to me.”

It took Buxton nine long seasons to reach this milestone, but given how the power element of his skillset has emerged since 2020, perhaps future home run milestones will fall more quickly.

He’s shown that he can hit homers in bulk -- and now, it’s just about keeping him on the field so that he can impact the Twins with those long balls as often as possible, as he did with the milestone blast that set the stage for a 4-3 win over the White Sox in 10 innings, spurred by 7 2/3 suffocating innings from Pablo López and a walk-off bunt by Michael A. Taylor.

“He's a special player,” teammate Kyle Farmer said. “He's a lot of fun to watch. Never seen someone like him play the game of baseball. I'm just glad I'm on this team to learn.”

Though the Twins once hoped for Buxton to be a contact hitter who utilized his blazing speed when the onetime can’t-miss prospect first debuted as a 21-year-old in 2016, it took him a while to find the approach that made him most comfortable at the plate -- and he really started coming into his own as a power hitter in 2020, when his slugging percentage jumped to .577 before it soared even higher to .647 in ‘21.

Buxton entered Tuesday’s game with 48 homers in his previous 162 games, dating back to exactly the start of the 2021 season, with a .571 slugging percentage that ranked fifth among all hitters with at least 600 plate appearances in that span -- behind only Mike Trout, Aaron Judge, Yordan Alvarez and Bryce Harper.

“I didn’t think I was going to get big enough to hit 100, so I thought I was just going to be like how baseball used to be, just put the ball on the ground and run, [that] type of guy,” Buxton said. “The older I got, the weight started coming, and I started figuring a few more things out. The power just kind of started generating itself.”

It was that wake-up call in 2018, he said, when the Twins didn’t recall him from Triple-A at the end of the season, when he realized he needed to refocus, simplify, tune out the noise and find the approach that made him the five-tool prospect and No. 2 overall pick that he’d once been.

He showed up as a new man in 2019, and since then, that’s who he’s been whenever he’s been healthy and on the field.

“Early in my career, sliders, curveballs, off-speed pitches, I was like, couldn’t do anything with them,” Buxton said. “I couldn’t drive them in the gap. It was just, flip them over second base, get on base and steal. I knew I was more than that, but you’ve got to figure that out within yourself.”

“He worked hard to redevelop himself as a hitter, to figure out how to become this kind of player,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “It’s obviously in there and we get a chance to see it all the time, and it’s great every time we see it. But you've really got to give him the credit.”

Following Tuesday’s game, Buxton admitted that he still hadn’t had the chance to figure out what it meant to him yet. But it was already particularly special for him because his father, Felton Buxton II, for whom he does his “truck horn” celebration, was in the stands to watch him take this step.

“It’s special,” Buxton said. “I’ll turn the page quick because we play early tomorrow, but I’ll cherish the rest of tonight.”