Twins smash six home runs, beat Seattle 10-4 for first win of season

After fizzling in the first two games of the season, the Twins offense blistered Sunday with a breakout six-homer, 10-4 victory over Seattle.

But all that offensive production didn't spontaneously ignite at the plate. Rather, it was a sizzling defensive play to end the first inning that became the spark.

With a runner on first and two outs, Mariners cleanup hitter Mitch Haniger plunked a double into the no man's land of left-center field. As Seattle waved Jesse Winker home, Alex Kirilloff collected the ball and relayed it to Carlos Correa in short left field. The shortstop then threw a strike to Gary Sanchez, who made a perfect tag at the plate to end the inning.

The Twins turned that fire into an inferno once they stepped up to the plate, forcing Seattle starter Marco Gonzales to work through the entire lineup, beginning with a leadoff homer from Byron Buxton.

"We rake. I love saying that," Buxton said. "We're all around just a great team. We got the defense. We got the hitters. We got speed. We got the arms."

The Twins didn't live up to Buxton's claim in their first two games. The Twins lost both by one run, scoring a combined four runs off three homers, and having a 16 at-bats dry spell Saturday when they couldn't put a runner on base.

But Sunday's announced crowd of 17,018 at Target Field saw a monsoon of baserunners, three of which trotted in on Sanchez's first-inning grand slam. The blast provided some justice for Sanchez, who thought he had hit a walk-off homer in the season opener — and prematurely celebrated with a bat flip — only to see his fly ball caught in front of the left field wall.

In the seventh inning Sunday — after Buxton again homered, and Max Kepler, Jorge Polanco and Carlos Correa all found the seats — Sanchez doubled to drive in the Twins' first run of the year not produced by a home run and finished with five RBI.

"Our bats woke up," Sanchez said in Spanish through an interpreter. "And that's what we're capable of doing."

Sanchez, a new addition to the team this spring training in a trade with the Yankees, is still a bit stoic about his stellar plays. But Correa — himself a newcomer after signing as a free agent in March — talked up the moment for him, saying Sanchez's and Buxton's first-inning smashes were "the highlight of the game." And that's coming from a guy whose first home run as a Twins in the sixth inning was a massive 458-footer to the third deck with an exit velocity of 113.4 miles per hour.

Amid the flurry of out-of-the-park deliveries, Twins starter Bailey Ober went five innings to win his season debut, only facing some real trouble in the third. That's when he allowed four earned runs on Adam Frazier's RBI single and Haniger's three-run homer. Ober ended with four hits, two walks and four strikeouts.

"He didn't look in a good mood, based on maybe a little bit him feeling a little off, maybe not getting the results that he was looking for out there," Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said of Ober. "But he still fought, and he fought through the start, which was great to see, and he gets us through five on a day where he threw probably a handful of pitches that he didn't want to throw or were maybe a tick off. … You add that all together, I consider that a really good start."

While the narrative of the past three games has been all about offense — the lack of it in the first two games and the overflow of it Sunday — Correa wanted to point out something that first-inning relay out displayed.

"Defense has been solid the first three days," the shortstop said. "We lost two close games early because we didn't hit. But when the defense is that solid, and you can maintain that, you're going to have great results."