MINNEAPOLIS -- The small steps forward keep coming for the Minnesota offense.
The first step was to get a blowout in the books -- and that happened in Game 1 of the Twins' series against the White Sox. The next step was to claw back for a last-second comeback victory -- and they did that in Game 2. The following element in the sequence, evidently, was for the deeply slumping members of the lineup to start showing signs of life -- and that came Wednesday.
Birthday boy Willi Castro celebrated his 27th with an early three-run homer and a hustle double, while Christian Vázquez added three hits and Max Kepler continued his resurgent return from the IL as one of the more complete offensive showings of the season led to a 6-3 victory over the White Sox at Target Field behind a season-high 13 hits by Minnesota’s bats.
“To be honest, I think … it's the best birthday I've had so far,” Castro said.
Granted, not many Twins hitters have been off to particularly productive starts this season, but it had been rough sledding for a handful of the club’s bottom-of-the-order hitters, including Castro (.538 OPS entering Wednesday) and Vázquez (.392 OPS). Might as well throw Kepler in there, too, considering he’d been 1-for-20 before hitting the IL on April 9.
But this series against a scuffling White Sox squad offered as good a chance as any to turn that around, and they took advantage.
“Really, the middle to the bottom of our lineup did a pretty good job of hitting balls hard, of taking some tough pitches, getting on base and ultimately helping us win the game,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “So I give them a lot of credit.”
It was a needed sight for Minnesota when the bottom of the lineup got the scoring started in the second inning, when a Carlos Santana leadoff walk, an Austin Martin double and a Vázquez RBI single set up Castro to crush a Garrett Crochet slider into the left-field home run porch to give the Twins a 4-0 lead, marking the third consecutive game in which they scored first.
“To be honest, when you're struggling, you just try to go out there and try to get a hit,” Castro said. “That's probably why there's a lot of swing and miss, because just trying to go out there and get a hit. That's when the slump comes. I just think if you go and trust yourself, get a good pitch to hit, everything will come out natural.”
Castro later added a hustle double in the fourth inning for his second multi-hit game in his last three appearances, while Manuel Margot (.521 OPS entering the day) also collected two hits for his second multi-hit game of the season and Vázquez hit three singles for his first game of the season with multiple knocks.
Predictably, it’s a focus on making contact for many of those struggling hitters that has helped the Twins string together more of these good plate appearances, Margot said. Vázquez, for instance, lined two of his singles to the opposite field with short swings, while Kepler simply made contact on a pair of pop flies that dropped in for hits.
“Just making adjustments and keep being aggressive and lower the strikeouts, because getting struck out isn't going to get you anywhere,” Margot said through interpreter Mauricio Ortiz.
It still hasn’t permeated to all of the team’s struggling hitters, as the deep season-opening slumps for both Kyle Farmer and Carlos Santana carried through Wednesday’s game -- but as the Twins continue to get healthier and perhaps more productive, there could be more leeway for the club to work around them as they work through those struggles.
Carlos Correa could seemingly return to the club within the week as he ramps up his baseball activity from the intercostal strain that sent him to the IL on April 13, while the immediate success of Trevor Larnach and Kepler’s newfound health could give the Twins more opportunities to play Alex Kirilloff at first base if needed.
In the meantime, the group that is holding down the fort is starting to find more of a way to scrape together some of these better plate appearances.
“A lot of it is about competitiveness of when you step to the plate, making sure you're doing your absolute best to swing at strikes first and foremost, and be content with just a good swing,” Baldelli said. “Put a good swing on the ball. Our guys did a good job with that.”