'Big swing': Sanó's 30th blast leads Twins

MINNEAPOLIS -- Say what you will about the streakiness and the strikeouts, but very few players can make ballparks look small the way that Miguel Sanó can when he lays into a pitch.

Those big swings can change the tenors of games in a real hurry, and the slugger did so again late in a tight contest in Tuesday night's series opener against the Tigers, when he turned on a fastball from reliever José Ureña and deposited it into the left-field upper deck for his 30th homer of the season. That made him the seventh player in Twins history with multiple 30-homer seasons as part of Minnesota’s 3-2 win over Detroit at Target Field.

The 28-year-old Sanó joined Harmon Killebrew (eight seasons), Justin Morneau (three), Bob Allison (two), Gary Gaetti (two), Tom Brunansky (two) and Brian Dozier (two) in that slugging echelon and is now four blasts shy of his career high of 34, set during the 2019 “Bomba Squad” season.

“It's a big swing,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “I'm not surprised to see him hitting 30 home runs again. He's a Major League ballplayer. Hitting 30 home runs is part of what he does. That's who he is. He brings more than just that to the table, too."

The Twins followed Sanó’s seventh-inning blast with a walk, single and sac fly to add onto their slim lead created in the third inning, when Byron Buxton’s speed generated a run, in support of a mostly dominant effort by six members of the pitching staff, who came one out shy of the club’s ninth shutout of the season before the Tigers plated a pair of two-out runs in the ninth off Alex Colomé.

That performance was started by Charlie Barnes and ended by Colomé, and in between came four relievers who could be part of Minnesota’s bullpen next season. Jorge Alcala and Caleb Thielbar showed off their maturation into high-leverage arms with perfect innings, while Tyler Duffey avoided damage in a scoreless frame and Ralph Garza Jr. threw a hitless inning in a continued bid for a spot on the 2022 roster.

“The guys on the mound came out, starting with Charlie, one after the other, and did a great job making pitches,” Baldelli said. “I mean, every single guy, there’s really nothing else. There’s no other way to think about it. Every guy came in [and] did a good job. We’re facing a team that’s playing good baseball, too, and the Tigers, they’ve had a good second half. They’re doing their thing.”

That late action from Detroit’s bats made Sanó’s homer all the more meaningful in the context of the game -- and though he struck out in his other three plate appearances (and became the fastest player in MLB history to 1,000 strikeouts earlier this season), that’s the essence of Sanó’s production, and something the Twins have lived with, especially considering his average exit velocity (93.3 mph) ranks sixth in the American League and his hard-hit rate (55.6 percent) ranks fourth.

The strikeouts, on a game-to-game basis, are easier to live with when Sanó is making contact, but his affinity for prolonged cold slumps -- which the club has no choice but to let him play through to get to this hard-hitting form -- is tougher. That’s something the Twins had to endure in May, when Sanó struck out in 41.3 percent of his plate appearances; he was moved down to seventh or eighth in the lineup at times throughout the summer.

Still, he did endure that rough patch, and the strikeout rate has come back down to around 32 percent and the walk rate has come back up to around 12 percent in the second half as the numbers have largely stabilized since the All-Star break.

“The beginning of the year this year, there was more swing-and-miss than maybe you’re looking for and all that,” Baldelli said. “That's not what we need to really focus on here, because in the last few months, he's been very steady, actually. He's gone out there and had very competitive [at-bats]. He's gone out there and gotten on base for the guys around him in the lineup. He's shortened his stroke up.”

That shorter stroke will still result in strikeouts -- it’s who Sanó is -- and he’s still not close to the .923 OPS of his heights in 2019, but the .852 OPS of his second half is at least a closer approximation, with game-changing ability in every contacted swing.