'Fun way to win': Polanco, Twins bash 5 HRs

MINNEAPOLIS -- Once again, Byron Buxton vaporized a baseball to kick-start Minnesota’s offensive attack. This time, the homers didn’t stop coming.

Buxton, Nick Gordon and Max Kepler all crushed long homers, but the night -- as it so often has this season -- belonged to Jorge Polanco. Contributing two blasts as part of a team-leading three hits to extend his team-leading home run total to 29, the second baseman matched Minnesota’s single-season record for home runs by a switch-hitter in the Twins’ 9-2 blowout win against the Royals at Target Field on Saturday.

“I think we got some pitches out over the plate and really didn’t miss our opportunities,” said manager Rocco Baldelli, who recorded his 200th career win. “It’s not the way we do it every night. We’ve been having good at-bats as a whole. It’s a fun way to win and it’s kind of an explosive way to win. The dugout really gets going and enjoys it, too, when you do it like this.”

Whether with his five walk-offs this season, his ability to play both infield positions up the middle or in all this newfound power, Polanco has often been the man of the hour in Minnesota in 2021. He matched Chili Davis’ switch-hitting homer record from 1991 with aplomb by going back to back with Buxton in the first inning and cranking a two-run blast a Statcast-projected 406 feet in the fifth inning for his third multi-homer game of the year.

As Polanco continues to extend his club home run lead over Miguel Sanó, his well-rounded game with contributions in power, average, speed and in the clutch make him the team leader in hits (145), runs (87), doubles (33), homers (29) and stolen bases (10) with less than a month to go in the season. If he can maintain those advantages, he’ll be the second hitter in club history to lead the team in all five categories in a season, joining Gary Ward in 1982.

The contact skills and line-drive ability have always been there, as has his speed. Neither Polanco nor Baldelli can identify anything in particular that has helped his power surge to this level outside of his newfound ankle health, but this kind of ability to damage the ball over a full season (considering his .917 OPS since the start of May) has Polanco poised to be a key middle-of-the-order force on Twins teams for years to come, with the potential of being under team control through 2025.

“I think the power stroke, it’s not something that’s really that much of a conscious effort from him,” Baldelli said. “He’s not going up there taking swings that are unlike swings we’ve seen him take before. I think it’s very much him dialing in, seeing the ball very well, not missing his pitches when he gets them.”

As was the case on Friday night, Buxton steered the Twins in a powerful direction when he crushed a projected 444-foot homer on a hanging sinker in the first inning, joining Nelson Cruz as the only Minnesota players in the Statcast era (since 2015) with homers of 440 feet or longer in consecutive games.

“Again, physically, he is a gifted player, but he’s getting to different levels of his career because of his mind and his ability to make adjustments both big and small,” Baldelli said. “I haven’t lined up his video from the first year I got a chance to watch him here until now, but he’s a guy that I think is going to continue to do this kind of damage as time goes on. I really do believe that.”

Polanco followed with the first of his blasts, Gordon crushed his longest career homer a projected 432 feet in the second, Kepler mashed a solo blast in the fourth and Polanco added another in the fifth before the Twins added three more runs in the seventh without a long ball to cap Minnesota’s first winning margin of more than three runs since Aug. 14.

The unlucky provider of all five Minnesota blasts was Kansas City rookie Brady Singer, who became only the second pitcher to allow that many homers to the Twins in club history. All five of the homers off Singer came with two strikes, and neither the sinker nor the slider proved fruitful in those situations for the young right-hander, with three long balls coming against the sinker and two against the slider.

​​“This is a team that thrives -- most of their success comes on the long ball,” Kansas City manager Mike Matheny said. “Especially in this ballpark. You have to try and figure out how to navigate when you get to the two-strike count. He just didn’t have enough weapons to get it done.”

It won’t always work for the Twins to rely on the long ball to this extent, but this kind of eruption could ignite an offense that had been held to four or fewer runs in 11 of its last 14 games -- and in any case, they put on quite the show for one night.