Polanco's consistency shines through rainy night

MINNEAPOLIS -- Byron Buxton and Luis Arraez may be this team’s All-Stars, but Jorge Polanco is back to reminding everyone why he was the Twins’ most valuable player last season.

Once, twice, three times, the skies opened up over Target Field on Tuesday night, leaving players scattering into the dugouts, rallies ending unfinished and shirtless fans deliriously dancing in the seats as the rain poured over them for a combined 1 hour and 43 minutes’ worth of rain delays.

Needless to say, the conditions were far from favorable for anyone to maintain any level of consistency throughout all the starts and stops of the Twins’ 6-3 loss to the Brewers that was interrupted by a trio of weather stoppages in the second, fourth and fifth innings. Still, Polanco’s bat held steady as he homered and scored two of the three Minnesota runs to continue his recent run of power since coming off the injured list at the end of June.

“When Polo starts doing this kind of stuff, the real difference is he's having the same good at-bats, he's still making good decisions up there, but he picks pitches and seems to identify them early and turns on them pretty well,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “He gets the head [of the bat] out good. He doesn't get overly big. He doesn't get overly long [with his swing].”

Polanco turned on a middle-middle sinker from Brewers right-hander Jason Alexander in the second inning, depositing his 13th homer of the season into the right-field bleachers that also marked his sixth in 12 games since coming off the only IL stint of his nine-year MLB career on June 28 – one shy of his career-high in any 12-game span.

The fact that the 14 games he missed in June with back tightness marked Polanco’s only stint on the sidelines has been a significant part of his value to the Twins, especially considering he needed surgery on his right ankle in back-to-back winters following the ‘19 and ‘20 seasons after he played through pain in both campaigns. Other than in ‘20, when his left-handed swing was hampered by that ankle issue throughout the shortened season, this is the consistent hitter he’s been all along.

“[Health] just makes everybody feel better at the plate or pitching, you know?” Polanco said following his two-homer performance in Chicago on July 6. “When you're hurt, you just want to be better. I feel better."

Polanco added a walk in the fourth, scoring on Nick Gordon’s RBI single, and knocked a single in the sixth as part of the Twins’ bases-loaded opportunity off Brewers reliever Hoby Milner, making him the only Minnesota hitter with multiple knocks in the game.

But the Twins couldn’t get key hits to fall elsewhere in their lineup -- and the inclement weather certainly didn’t help, unfortunately for poor Gio Urshela.

Three at-bats following Polanco’s round-tripper in the second inning, Urshela was four pitches into his plate appearance against Alexander, having fallen behind in an 0-2 count, when the steady rain that suddenly began falling over Target Field escalated to the point where Baldelli emerged from the dugout and the umpires convened to halt the game for a 29-minute delay.

After the rain stopped and the grounds crew returned the field to playing condition, Urshela emerged, fouled off another pitch and then grounded out to shortstop.

As luck would have it, Urshela was at the plate again in the fourth inning when another sudden burst of rain surged into the ballpark -- hard enough for the players to vacate the diamond, but not sustained enough for the grounds crew to completely re-tarp the infield. Eight minutes later, Urshela once again stepped into the box and lined out to center field.

"I was like, 'Oh my god, it's me again,'” Urshela said. “It was funny.”

That time, the Twins had already rallied to tie the game on Polanco’s walk and singles from Alex Kirilloff and Gordon, and were threatening to pull ahead when the rain washed the rally away -- perhaps literally.

The final delay, a one-hour, six-minute affair that followed the fifth inning, came nowhere near Urshela’s spot in the lineup and didn’t stifle any sort of rally, and the Twins did load the bases in the sixth before Urshela grounded out. They had their chances, but the weather certainly didn’t help in a key spot, either.

“Yeah, I’ve never seen anything like that really happen to one player in a game before, having two at-bats halted,” Baldelli said. “You’re really behind the 8-ball at that point. It’s just a challenging spot to be in.”