Sanó puts in hitting work with mentor Cruz

MINNEAPOLIS -- Since the Twins brought Nelson Cruz into their clubhouse before the 2019 season, Miguel Sanó has often referred to the veteran slugger as being like his dad.

And sometimes, a father pulls his son aside to help him out when he's down.

On the morning of May 15, Cruz invited Sanó to his house in the Twin Cities for some extra work away from the stadium with his personal hitting coach, Frank Valdez. The group has convened three times this season to help Sanó find his mechanics and approach at the plate following a brutal .119/.280/.209 start to the season.

That night, Sanó hit a three-run, game-winning homer against the A's. He's slugged .771 since, with seven homers and a 1.110 OPS in a 13-game stretch entering Friday's series opener against the Royals at Target Field.

"We've been talking and working together," Sanó said. "I've got a lot of information from him. I just like to stay short to the ball and see it, like, the routine I've been doing with Nellie. That's what we're working on."

"Nelson, and some of the people that Nelson talks to and works with, have great baseball minds as well," manager Rocco Baldelli said. "Any time Miggy is spending time with Nelson, there’s certainly going to be a lot of positives coming out of that."

The first time Cruz pulled Sanó aside in such a manner, Cruz said, was last year, when the pair went to Justin Morneau's batting cages and did some work with Valdez, who played as a Minor Leaguer in the Twins' organization from 1986-91, and now operates a baseball training program in Florida. Valdez's social media shows photos of him at his facility with players like Cruz, Sanó, Jean Segura, Starling Marte and Jeimer Candelario.

This season, Cruz used his own garage, where Sanó just got a different set of eyes and a different voice to help workshop his mechanics. Sanó said the focus of those sessions was similar to the work he'd been doing at Target Field with hitting coaches Edgar Varela and Rudy Hernandez.

"I see the struggles he had, especially with the fastballs," Cruz said. "And fastballs early, with breaking balls, his timing wasn’t there. And I feel like his legs weren’t working properly so we focused on that, and he’s swinging the bat much better since then, so definitely, that's something we all like to see."

Even when they're not working together in person, Sanó said he sometimes talks to Valdez on the phone to explain different elements of their training.

"We try to focus on the mechanics and the approach, and it's more mentality that we talk about and we've been doing," Sanó said. "The simple stuff he teaches me, that's what I'm trying to do in the games right now."

Take this as another example of Cruz specifically taking Sanó, a younger Dominican, under his wing. The pair are all but inseparable during pregame warmups, when Cruz takes ground balls alongside Sanó at first base. When Cruz arrived in '19, the Twins put his locker near Sanó in the clubhouse.

His influence helped unlock a career-best season from Sanó in 2019, when the young slugger set personal bests with a .923 OPS and 34 homers.

This year, that work has paid off with three homers from Sanó that made the difference between victory and defeat, along with a blast off 2020 American League Cy Young Award winner Shane Bieber and a three-homer game. The Twins often say that Sanó can change the course of games with his timely power, and that's been particularly significant amid the club's struggles early this season.

Sanó hasn't shied away from putting in the work --- and Cruz helped make that work pay off.

"That's amazing seeing people like Nellie," Sanó said. "He can help everybody with everything. The moment we were playing with him from 2019 to here, that's amazing. Those are special moments. I love Nellie. Everything he does comes from his heart. If every player acted like him, baseball would be really different."