TORONTO -- The Twins couldn’t keep Vladimir Guerrero Jr. in the park, but their bats still packed far too powerful of a punch for the Majors’ home run leader and young MVP hopeful to overcome.

Jorge Polanco, Josh Donaldson and Miguel Sanó crushed back-to-back-to-back homers in the third inning as the Twins erupted for five runs in the frame to muscle their way to a 7-3 victory in Friday night’s series opener at Rogers Centre, featuring Minnesota’s first three-homer inning against the Blue Jays since 1986 and a sixth-inning blast from Brent Rooker in his return from the paternity list.

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“I think any of us that have watched baseball know that there’s that collective energy and things that go along with watching your teammates go out there, hunt good pitches, hit good pitches,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “Maybe it gives you something to kind of aim for when you go out there to the plate, too.”

The Blue Jays carried a 2-1 lead into the third inning, but the first six Twins batters reached base -- including the first four against left-hander Hyun Jin Ryu -- started by Ryan Jeffers’ leadoff single and Byron Buxton’s RBI double. Polanco followed with his career-high and team-high 31st blast of the season, a 425-foot, two-run shot to left, before Donaldson drew a mixture of applause and boos from his former home crowd with an opposite-field homer that chased Ryu.

The pitching change to Ross Stripling didn’t staunch the flow, as Sanó followed with the longest homer of them all, a 436-foot blast to straightaway center, marking the first time the Twins hit three consecutive homers since April 26, 2019, when Nelson Cruz, Eddie Rosario and C.J. Cron went back-to-back-to-back against Alex Cobb of the Orioles.

“There are times when our lineup’s been held in check,” Donaldson said. “When we score, we tend to score in bunches. And we were able to do that again tonight.”

With Toronto clawing to maintain its position as one of the two Wild Card teams in the tight American League Wild Card race, Blue Jays manager Charlie Montoyo showed his urgency with a very quick hook for Ryu following Donaldson’s blast -- but unfortunately for his team, the brunt of the damage had already been done in the blink of an eye.

Though the Twins aren’t playing for October, Donaldson thinks of them as already playing for next April. All this pop in the heart of the lineup doesn’t have to be transient, with Polanco, Donaldson and Sanó all under contract next season, soon to be rejoined by Alex Kirilloff and Trevor Larnach, with Jose Miranda also expected to start contributing in 2022.

“We’re trying to set the tone, not just finish strong this year but leading into next year,” Donaldson said. “We have guys that are going to be here, most likely, going into 2022. We want to start setting the tone now that we still have the expectations to win, and go out there and play hard to where we roll into Spring Training, continue setting that foundation that we’re setting now.”

Polanco has embodied that tone throughout the second half, exemplified once again when he overcame a costly pair of errors on defense to key the Twins’ surge on offense.

Starting at shortstop in place of Andrelton Simmons, who stayed in the United States due to considerations involving his ongoing application for permanent U.S. residency, Polanco double-clutched and overthrew Sanó on a routine two-out grounder to short in the bottom of the second, allowing a run to score from second. On the next play, he airmailed a cutoff throw from the outfield as another run crossed home plate, erasing Minnesota’s early 1-0 lead.

But he immediately made up for those two runs with his big swing in the third inning against a Ryu curveball, which came one foot shy of matching the longest right-handed homer of his career. He added singles in the seventh and ninth to collect his team-leading 15th three-hit game of the year, more than his next two teammates on the list combined (Luis Arraez, with nine, and Donaldson, with five).

“That’s not an easy place to be for any player, whether you’re a Major League All-Star or not, but not surprised by the way that Polo responded,” Baldelli said. “He has things that he can lean on. He has the confidence, and he knows what to do when things like that happen.”