ST. PETERSBURG, FLA. – The Twins hit a club record 56 home runs in May, the same month that a record 1,135 home runs were smashed throughout major league baseball.
One day into June, and the Twins are warning that more is coming.
After going homerless the first two games of the series, Marwin Gonzalez and Byron Buxton each went deep as the Twins pulled away to a 6-2 win at Tropicana Field over the Rays and are 14-3 over their past 17 games. After losing on Thursday, the Twins have beaten Tampa Bay twice and send American League ERA leader Jake Odorizzi to the mound on Sunday with a chance to win the four-game series at Tropicana Field.
In addition to the homers, both Gonzalez and Miguel Sano doubled high off the wall as the Twins offense resembled and sounded like the roaring engine it was for most of May. That delighted the few thousand Twins fans in attendance, as their year-round headquarters in Fort Myers is less than a two-hour drive away.
New month, same stuff. The Twins will take it.
"I think I look at it in two ways," Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. "I would say it was a great month. I think our guys played phenomenally. I think we should be very happy with how it went for the last 31 days. All that being said, it's not May anymore, and it's time to keep playing, and keep winning and keep producing."
Will May be an outlier or a warning?
"I think we're able to do that and will continue do that and break records, or whatever you want to call it," Sano said. "I think as the weather warms up and all the players stay together and work hard those things will take care of themselves."
The Twins on Saturday continued another good habit from May — scoring in the third inning. Down 1-0 after two, Jorge Polanco and Gonzalez hit back-to-back RBI doubles as the Twins jumped to a 2-1 lead. That gave them 64 runs scored in the third inning, the most of any inning. That suggests they learn a lot from the first time they see a pitcher and make him pay the second time he works through the order.
On Saturday, Rays righthander Yonny Chirinos had great movement on his fastball, but the Twins figured him out.
Buxton hit a fat slider to drive in Jonathan Schoop with a single in the fourth. Gonzalez got an even fatter one from Hunter Wood in the fifth, blasting it over the center field wall as the Twins took a 4-1 lead. Buxton homered in the sixth, and Sano added his RBI double in the seventh as the Twins scored at least a run in five consecutive innings.
Chirinos (6-2) gave up four runs over 5⅓ innings on nine hits and a walk.
"I think after the second, third inning we were patient at the plate," Sano said. "He wasn't throwing those [splitters] for strikes or locating those for strikes. So we were just patient and swinging at pitches in the zone."
Gibson (6-2) had to fight through the second and third innings and actually pounded his hand into his glove after getting Christian Arroyo to ground out to end the third with the bases loaded. Gibson needed 28 pitches in that inning but kept Tampa Bay off the board.
He was rewarded, as the Twins built their lead. They are now a season-high 21 games over .500 just over two months into the season.
"Surprised probably isn't necessarily the right word," Gibson said. "We expect a lot out of ourselves so maybe we're a little ahead of where we thought we'd be, but we had a pretty good feeling we were going to be pretty good."
