Offense 'very nice' behind 16 hits, just 1 HR

Sometimes you don’t need to rely too much on the long ball to have a strong offensive showing. And even for a team like the Twins, who are fourth in the Majors in home runs with 213, Tuesday night's performance proved that.

The Twins’ bats provided enough spark to help make up for rookie Griffin Jax’s shortest start of the season in their 9-5 series-opening win over the Cubs at Wrigley Field, where they put together 16 hits -- including just one homer -- in the victory.

Jax, who hit three batters and struck out six, was pulled after giving up three runs in three innings. The righty was let off the hook, however, after a three-run fourth inning by his offense, highlighted by a two-run homer from rookie Nick Gordon -- the third of his career.

"It was really kind of an explosive effort from our guys,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. “You can point to a number of them, I can if you want. But really, everywhere you looked, there were good swings. There were guys who came up in good situations with people on base getting it done. It felt like we had guys on base all day long.

“It also felt like, and you can’t fall prey to this, but it also felt like it wasn’t necessarily a [four]-run game. It felt like we had scored more runs than we actually had, and we scored a bunch of runs. So we had to stay locked in in every way to win this ballgame. But overall it was a very nice offensive performance from our guys.”

Gordon, who has slashed .333/.395/.564 over 39 at-bats in September, was one of four Twins players on Tuesday to have three hits and one of five players with a multi-hit game.

The showing was one of the most productive from the Twins’ lineup this season. The 16 hits are tied for the club's second most in a single game this season, and five players drove in at least one run, which included two-RBI games from Gordon, Josh Donaldson and Max Kepler.

“I think we got in some pretty good counts overall,” Donaldson said. “Obviously, it wasn't a really good night to hit here at Wrigley with the wind blowing in, the ball wasn't really carrying very well. It was kind of odd. Most of our runs come off homers. I think 50% of our runs come off home runs and we only had one. It's not normally what we've done but tonight was a good night.”

Jax, who gave up homers to Willson Contreras and Trayce Thompson, said he couldn’t find a consistent grip on the ball on a cold night. But Jax said the run support showed some of the offensive power the Twins still have on the roster even amid a down year.

“It's huge for our confidence,” Jax said. “... I just tell myself before going out there and in-between innings, ‘As long as I'm giving my team a chance to keep us in the ballgame, that it's going to be a grinder.’ So I'm going up there and trying to get quick outs, trying to get our team back in the dugout because they're gonna swing the bat and they're gonna score some runs.”