Buxton breaks out of rut with two-homer performance

MINNEAPOLIS -- Coming off a seven-game road trip in which they scored 42 runs and blasted 14 homers, the Twins hoped to keep the offensive attack rolling when they opened a three-game series against the White Sox on Friday.

Fortunately for them, one of their most important players joined in on the fun.

Byron Buxton homered in each of his first two at-bats, putting a miserable start to the second half in the rear-view mirror as the Twins beat Chicago 9-4.

Buxton entered the game on an 0-for-26 skid, but he snapped out of it in style in the first inning, crushing Lance Lynn’s first-pitch fastball into the bullpen in left-center for a three-run homer.

The 427-foot blast left his bat at 114.3 mph. According to Statcast, Buxton has hit only one ball harder this season, a 115.1 mph laser that went for a double off the Dodgers’ Evan Phillips on May 15.

Buxton’s second home run of the night was less impactful but likely just as important to his confidence. He led off the bottom of the fourth by hitting a 2-2 slider from Lynn on a high arc 354 feet down the left-field line. That gave him his 10th career multi-homer game and his second of the year.

After the game, Buxton said he’d been working on letting pitches travel farther before committing to swinging, which allowed him to homer off both a fastball and a breaking pitch in consecutive at-bats.

“Found a little bit of video on my swing, and that was some emphasis that we put on today, just quality at-bats,” he told Bally Sports North.

Twins manager Rocco Baldelli sounded as relieved as anyone in the clubhouse to see Buxton have a breakout game.

“He passionately cares so much about winning,” Baldelli said of Buxton. “He cares about the organization. He cares about the team, his teammates, the community, doing things right. He cares about those things so much, and he shows that out on the field, the way he plays. He loves to play, and people respond to him. They have, and they always will.”

Winning pitcher Joe Ryan, who struck out 10 in six innings, echoed those sentiments.

“He’s the face of the organization, and just having success and doing what he can do … he’s been hitting the ball so hard too, and they don’t always land,” Ryan said. “It was good to see him finally go a lot farther than the stadium walls."

Buxton was far from the only Twin to feast on White Sox pitching. Chicago took an early lead when Andrew Benintendi hit Ryan’s first pitch of the game into the right-center-field stands. But Alex Kirilloff got that back and more with a two-run shot to right-center in the bottom of the frame. Kirilloff later hit a two-run double, giving him four homers and 13 RBIs in the past six games.

Throw in a long solo homer by Ryan Jeffers, and the Twins were off and running on this six-game homestand as they try to put some distance between themselves and second-place Cleveland in the American League Central.

“It starts with the good at-bats. It starts with the good swings. It starts with using the whole field,” Baldelli said of his team’s offensive approach. “And then it progresses from there.”