Two-homer game boosts Garver's confidence

CHICAGO -- Mitch Garver went 4-for-16 in his four-game rehab assignment with Triple-A St. Paul last week, but he admitted before he was activated on Monday that he wasn’t really sure if his timing at the plate carried through the nearly seven weeks he spent on the injured list. Major League pitching, he said, is on a completely different plane from Triple-A pitching.

Well, he’s right about one thing: Garver was totally different against MLB pitchers in his first game back. They couldn't seem to keep him in the ballpark quite as well.

The newly healthy backstop went yard in his first two plate appearances in the second half of Monday's doubleheader against the White Sox while guiding José Berríos through six strong innings as he sported a new cup made of Kevlar and epoxy in the aftermath of his groin contusion and emergency surgery on June 1 in Baltimore.

"It's hard to miss the two home runs that he obviously hit, squaring the ball up like that immediately, not an easy task to do after missing that time," manager Rocco Baldelli said. "But really, the quality of the at-bats in general were really good. He also laid off some tough pitches, put himself in a good spot to do some damage, didn't miss his pitches. Couldn't draw it up any better than that. Pretty exciting return for him."

Batting sixth in the Twins’ lineup against Reynaldo López, Garver got a slider that hung over the outer half, belt-high, and smashed it a projected 387 feet into the first row of the bleachers in left-center to give the Twins a 2-1 lead in the second inning. He followed that with an even longer 418-foot blast off Matt Foster in the fifth.

"Just kind of like going through seven weeks of not playing baseball and to come back and get in a game, I think the adrenaline helps out a lot," Garver said Monday. "I have more confidence in myself to go out there and trust the process I've been working on and to put it into game play. That's what happened tonight."

Garver was back in the lineup for a second straight game in Tuesday's night game against left-hander Dallas Keuchel, which again leads to the question of how the Twins will handle their catching tandem of Garver and fellow righty-hitting Ryan Jeffers, who occupied a timeshare behind the plate for much of the early season.

While Garver was sidelined, it was a fairly simple matter for Jeffers, a former top prospect, to assume most of the catching duties ahead of backup Ben Rortvedt, who was optioned down with Garver's activation. But the 24-year-old Jeffers didn't have the easiest time in this arrangement at the start of the year, when he sported a .147/.216/.176 line before he was optioned to Triple-A St. Paul, saying that the inconsistent at-bats were a tough adjustment.

Jeffers had a much better .207/.305/.446 line with a .750 OPS in 28 games while Garver was down, and he admitted to some uncertainty in how his routine could carry into this new -- but familiar -- arrangement, especially since he often saw the tougher end of the platoon split without many at-bats against left-handers at the start of the season.

"I was getting a lot of reps off lefties [while Garver was hurt]," Jeffers said. "I was crushing lefties and feeling really good there. Now, I don't know. Are we going to do what we did at the beginning of the year and he's just going to get all of the lefty at-bats? I don't know. We don't know. We'll see. I'm going to be here and do whatever my name is in the lineup to do."

Baldelli said that the catchers would once again occupy a relatively even split behind the plate, and Jeffers indicated that he still hadn't found a great balance for his routine because he was often unsure of when he would find himself behind the plate. The skipper is confident, though, that Jeffers' past experience will have paid off.

"Ryan is going to be fine," Baldelli said. "He’s going to continue to work hard. He’s been through a lot of different things this year already. And the more experience you have, the more things you see, both good and bad, the more it allows you to prepare going forward. And he’s in a lot better place right now than he was earlier in the year."