Twins seek less reliance on home runs as strikeouts pile up

The Twins didn't hit a home run Sunday, the first time all month they have gone consecutive games without reaching the seats. Yet for the first time since Aug. 1, they still managed to win.

That's a welcome, if uncommon, event for a team that has come to depend on home runs for a huge part of its offense. The Twins are 13-25 this season when held homerless and average only 1.95 runs per game. When they hit at least one home run, they are 52-35 and average 5.48 runs.

The dependence on home runs is even more apparent as a proportion of the team's offense. Minnesota's 168 home runs this year have accounted for 261 of its 551 runs, or 47.4%. It's the third time in their past four full seasons that homers have provided half, or close to it, of the team's offense.

That partly reflects a major change in the game, a shift toward power. For instance, in 1991, their last world championship season, homers resulted in 31.1% of the Twins offense, while during the 2019 season, when the Twins hit a major league-record 307 homers, they produced 51.2% of the offense.

"It's evolution. It's players and coaches realizing that it's far easier to score with one swing than string three hits together," Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said last week. "That said, I would say that like most teams, we would like to strike some sort of balance in how we score runs. You're going to have days where you don't connect, whether it's good pitching or just randomness, and you don't want that to mean that you aren't competitive on those days."

So what can a team do to score more without blasting the ball into the seats?

"It kind of varies, player to player. You have different kinds of hitters, and you try to find a way to string good at-bats together, put guys on base so a hit produces runs," Baldelli said, noting that the Twins "are among the best teams" at drawing walks, currently second in the American League. "We've discussed several times that when you simply put the ball in play, you never know what will happen."

That's a problem for the runaway leader in strikeouts, of course, and the Twins' total of 42 whiffs during the three-game series with Pittsburgh gives them 1,258 on the season, on pace to break the major league record of 1,596 set by the Cubs in 2021.

"There are times when you don't actually need one big swing to get it done and drive in all the runs. It's more about good at-bats than good swings, just finding a way to find the barrel in almost any direction," Baldelli said. "We've been doing a pretty decent job of having good at-bats consistently. We've been putting some runs on the board. I feel good about our offense and what we've been doing lately."

After Jordan Balazovic surrendered three runs, including a long Andrew McCutchen home run Saturday, the rookie righthander was optioned back to Class AAA St. Paul. Baldelli said he was encouraged by Balazovic's blunt assessment of his own difficulties, which had, after a promising first month in the majors, ballooned his ERA to 4.44.

"Jordan was really good about identifying and being honest about the way he was throwing the ball. He said, 'I just have to get in the zone. I was trying to find the zone with different pitches, in different ways, and I couldn't. And I need to do that. I need to pitch better,' " Baldelli said of his postgame meeting. "I like him taking that level of responsibility on that. He's had stretches where he's been good for us. Getting him back on track, getting him confident again, will be good for him."

Oliver Ortega, a righthander who posted a 4.50 ERA in 14 innings for the Twins in July, was recalled from the Saints. Ortega had five saves and a 1.82 ERA in St. Paul.

• Matt Wallner and Ryan Jeffers returned to the Twins lineup Sunday after each sat out Saturday, Wallner because of a sore right hand and Jeffers because of a sore back.

• Sonny Gray and Dallas Keuchel's back-to-back starts, in which each took a perfect game into the sixth inning, marked only the second time in franchise history that Twins pitchers have done that in the same calendar month. Steve Luebber was perfect through five against Texas on Aug. 7, 1976, and Dave Goltz did the same against Milwaukee on Aug. 31 that year. The only Twins lefthander over the past 50 seasons to have a longer bid for perfection than Keuchel was Eric Milton, who retired the first 20 hitters, one more than Keuchel, on April 9, 2000, in Kansas City.

• A four-run sixth inning, two homers from Yunior Severino and a perfect ninth inning by pitcher Kody Funderburk lifted the Saints over the Indianapolis Indians 7-6 at CHS Field.