MINNEAPOLIS — Not 24 hours before, Max Kepler embodied the Twins' frustration with their offensive slump.
The team had dropped six-consecutive games amid abysmal hitting, especially with runners in scoring position. The three-game sweep at Houston — the best team in the American League — only further deflated an already floundering lineup.
Kepler has been hitting below .150 this season and said of a hard-hit line-out Thursday against the Astros that a play like that is "the story of [his] career."
"I've been working in the cage, trying to tinker and figure something out to get around situations like that," Kepler said. "But I guess I haven't figured it out yet."
Yet starting a homestand against the Giants on Friday at Target Field, the Twins offense miraculously revived, as the team went on to shut out San Francisco, 9-0, in front of an announced crowd of 25,246.
Kepler wasn't in the lineup as Kyle Garlick took his place in right field and assumed the top spot in the batting order for the first time in 21 games. He'd been out with a rib injury right at the time the Twins needed him most, facing left-handed pitchers in almost half of those games.
On Friday against Giants' lefty Alex Wood, Garlick — whose role on the team is basically only to hit against lefties, one of his specialties — made it on base in his first three trips to the plate while the hitters as a whole chased Wood out after three innings.
Garlick scored on Carlos Correa's home run to put the Twins up 2-0 in the first inning. But the third inning is where the Twins really broke the game open, stacking up six runs on five hits.
The Twins loaded the bases off three-consecutive singles, with one run scoring on Jose Miranda's sacrifice fly. Wood hit Jorge Polanco with a pitch to load the bases again, and all three scored on Gilberto Celestino's double. Gary Sanchez stepped up to smash a two-run homer to complete the game-breaking outing.
Garlick added his own homer in the eighth inning, albeit off a position player pitching in Giants' catcher Austin Wynns.
Twins manager Rocco Baldelli has said at several points during this lull that eventually the pressure will lift and the hits will come.
"When you say things are inexplicable, there's a feeling that you're not taking responsibility for what's going on. So I don't like to say that," Baldelli said pregame. "But you don't have an answer for everything that goes on all the time. This is baseball, and we're talking about a reactionary and very challenging thing. And when you're dealing with those things, you're going to have serious ups and downs. And every season, every team is going to have serious ups and downs in performance over periods of time."
Twins starter Joe Ryan, meanwhile, didn't give up a run in his six innings, allowing just two hits and three walks with a hit batter while striking out eight. Emilio Pagan and Michael Fulmer came in to maintain the shutout.
The Twins (63-61) will need to sustain this rediscovered offense in order to make up ground in the American League Central with the playoffs looming. Entering the game, the Twins were tied with the White Sox four games out of the division lead and five games out of the wild card. Cleveland tops the Central.
The Giants (61-63) are in distant third in the National League West.
