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, the Twins got home runs from Marwin Gonzalez and Byron Buxton as they pulled away to a 6-2 win over the Rays to move to a season-high 21 games over .500. Kyle Gibson held Tampa Bay to one run over five innings to improve to 6-2 while lowering his ERA to 3.75.
On Sunday, they send American League ERA leader Jake Odorizzi to the mound 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 an audience that included a few thousand Twins fans, 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 before the game. "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.
"Again, I'm not overly worried about our group losing focus in any way. We end up talking about some of the accomplishments and I think that's great, but it's also just as important, or more important, to also look to the game today, and figure out how we're going to win today. And that's why our guys have been good, because they've been able to do that."
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 the see a pitcher and make him pay the second time through the order. On Saturday, Rays right-hander Yonny Chirinos had great movement on his fastball, but the Twins figured him out.
Buxton hit a fat slider to drive in Jonathan Schoop in the fourth. Gonzalez got an even fatter one 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 a run in five consecutive innings on Saturday.
Christian Arroyo homered off Ryne Harper in the eighth.
