Byron Buxton goes deep twice, carries Twins over White Sox 6-4 in 10 innings

As Byron Buxton readied his 10th-inning at-bat Sunday, with two runners on and his team down a run, his teammates were in his ear.

Miguel Sano. Carlos Correa. The entire team, honestly, were all telling him the same thing.

"Buck, you're going to win it."

With all that belief, the star center fielder could only approach the plate with one thought: "Go deep."

And he did, plopping a three-run homer into Target Field's second deck in left-center field, almost singlehandedly securing the Twins' first series sweep of the season with a 6-4 victory over the Chicago White Sox. Buxton pumped his fist in the air, beat his chest and ripped off his helmet as he jogged around the bases, shouting as he skipped to home into a mob of teammates, who sprayed him with Gatorade and slapped him on the back.

Buxton said he didn't even watch where the ball landed some 469 feet away, already knowing it was a winner as it left his bat as he cranked a 3-1 fastball from White Sox closer Liam Hendriks. He instead kept his eyes on the dugout and saw the elation from his teammates, the same ones who called that exact moment before it happened.

"It feels good," he said of his teammates' support. "The biggest part is that confidence taking over the clubhouse. Once you've got a confident clubhouse … there's nothing that we aren't capable of doing. This is just the start."

The announced crowd of 16,197 saw the Twins improve to 8-8 with their fourth consecutive victory, while the defending AL Central champion White Sox fell to 6-9 with their seventh loss in a row. And while it's only 16 games into the season, this result also put the Twins atop the division.

It didn't necessarily look as if that would be the outcome one pitch into the game. Chris Archer surrendered a first-pitch homer to Tim Anderson, then gave up another run in the third, when his defense bailed him out. Andrew Vaughn hit a two-out RBI single with the bases loaded, but a strong throw from Trevor Larnach in left field all the way to catcher Jose Godoy retired Jose Abreu before the Twins incurred any more damage.

Archer went only three innings, which he said was the plan in advance to keep him around 60 pitches. That gave starter-turned-long-reliever Josh Winder a chance to eat up four innings, his only blemish a leadoff home run to Danny Mendick in the seventh.

Meanwhile, the Twins had loaded the bases twice in the first three innings and managed only one run, off Gio Urshela's sacrifice fly. Buxton had struck out in his first three at-bats against White Sox star Lucas Giolito. It was a frustrating turn for a team that seemingly broke out of its offensive funk with nine runs Saturday.

Buxton recalled returning to the dugout after that third strikeout thinking he wasn't seeing any pitches well that day. But Carlos Correa — who wasn't in the lineup for a planned off day — came up to him and settled him down, reminding him to stay in his zone and do what he always does.

So in his next at-bat in the seventh inning, after Godoy had drawn a walk off lefthander Aaron Bummer, Buxton smacked an opposite-field home run over the right-field wall, tying the score at 3-3.

"We know how to get each other locked in," Buxton said. "That's the fun part of being in this locker room. Nobody cares about what you've done. It's all about trying to get the win at the end of the day. And we all got one picture, and it's to win a ring."

Afterward, Archer called Buxton "arguably one of the best players in the game." Twins manager Rocco Baldelli took it even farther than that.

"We talk about all these adjectives and things. We say he's elite, and he changes the game," Baldelli said. "Right now, there's no better player in the world than him.

"I think he's absolutely the best player in the world."