PHILADELPHIA -- How welcome was Joey Gallo's slump-busting performance on Saturday night? Forget two home runs, the Twins outfielder hadn’t even recorded two hits in a game since June 27.

Gallo tied a career high with four hits -- nearly as many as he had in the entire month of July (six) -- including two homers, four RBIs and a walk to lead a dominating 8-1 win for the Twins at Citizens Bank Park.

Gallo’s breakout came at the perfect time for his team. The Twins (61-58) snapped a four-game losing streak and upped their AL Central lead to 4 1/2 games over second-place Cleveland. The Guardians have lost two in a row on walk-offs against the Rays.

“We want to win,” Gallo said. “We want to make the playoffs. Everyone cares about each other. We’ve been with each other for six months, seven months straight. You want to have success. You want to help these guys win, but you want [your teammates] to have success, too. This isn't a hobby, this is life.”

Plenty of other guys had success for the Twins. Carlos Correa homered and extended his hitting streak to eight games.

Pablo López struck out seven over six scoreless innings of four-hit ball. He now has 180 strikeouts, eclipsing the career high of 174 that he had in 2022. With the win and six scoreless innings, López improves to 3-0 in August with an ERA of 0.47.

But the big story was Gallo, who entered the night 5-for-49 (.102) with 30 strikeouts over his previous 22 games. He worked a 3-2 walk after a couple of foul balls in the second inning.

In the fourth, he hit a wall-scraping home run to left to extend his team’s lead to 3-0. It was his second home run in four games following a 16-game stretch without a long ball.

“It’s tough not playing great,” said Gallo. “But at the end of the day, it’s baseball and you know you get another game tomorrow, usually. I’m kind of a jokester, but I’m serious about baseball and I’m a competitive person.

"So I just try to be the same every day. It’s hard, but that’s just part of being a good teammate, a successful player and professional.”

When Gallo lined a single to left off the wall in the sixth, it assured him his seventh multi-hit game of the year, but just his second since May 16. He had recorded more than two hits just once this season, on April 2, the third game of the year.

It had been mostly struggles since then, but his manager said that Gallo has remained himself throughout.

“He’s an enjoyable player to be around,” said manager Rocco Baldelli. “He’s a great teammate. He’s got a great sense of humor. He works hard. He does everything he’s supposed to do. So I think the guys do get excited and have some fun with him when he’s swinging like this."

Gallo’s big blast came in the seventh, when he stepped up with two on and two outs. The Twins held a 5-0 lead and a 97.2% win probability at the time. But probabilities don’t always matter against the Phillies (65-53), the hottest-hitting team in the league, who scored 13 runs against the Twins the night before.

Gallo fell behind 0-2, then took two pitches to even the count before hammering a slider to right-center. The dinger traveled 412 feet and had an exit velocity of 108.2 mph. It increased the Twins' win probability to 99.6%. Gallo capped his day, and matched a career high, with his fourth hit, a single in the top of the ninth.

“I don’t remember the last time I had four hits,” Gallo said. “I don’t know if I had that in the big leagues before.”

Gallo had four hits in five at-bats with Texas on May 16, 2019, in Kansas City. He only hit one home run -- a solo homer -- in that game.

Gallo, a two-time All-Star, signed a one-year deal with the Twins in December after spending 2022 with the Yankees and Dodgers. He now has more home runs than he had last season, the second straight season that he had been traded just before the Trade Deadline.

Gallo said he appreciates the chance to finally get some consistency.

“It’s nice to be somewhere for a minute now,” Gallo said. “The Deadline’s always scary because you just never know what’s going to happen. It was a relief that I was still here and able to finish what we started.”