Take away Miguel Sano’s monster Friday night against Arizona (3 hits, 2 homers, 1 walk, 3 RBI, 2 runs) and the big man’s August looks like this: .232 AVG, 2 HR, 4 RBI and 25 strikeouts in 61 plate appearances.
Sano, now on the 10-day disabled list with a stress reaction in his leg, will be missed – but the Twins have six other guys who’ve been tearing the cover off the ball in August.
Max Kepler is the only one of the six in the chart above hitting below .328 this month, but he’s more than made up for his lower average with 6 home runs.
Brian Dozier is doing exactly what he did last season when he took off in August, but Eddie Rosario has taken his game to the next level. He was hitting .250 with a .677 OPS on June 11. Since then he’s raised his batting average 53 points (now 10th in the American League) and his OPS nearly 175 points to .853.
And it’s becoming a regular thing for Rosario and Buxton. Rosario is hitting .352 in his last 57 games and Buxton’s average is a Jose Altuve-like .365 since the Fourth of July (25 games).
Who the hell knows what got into Jorge Polanco. He hit .078 in July and has flipped the switch to .397 in August.
Then there’s good ol’ Joe Mauer with at least two hits in seven of his last nine games (three hits in four of the last nine).
August has been, by far, Minnesota’s best month at the plate, with an average of 5.7 runs per game.
Since the All-Star break, the Twins own the eighth-best batting average and run total in all of baseball, and fifth-best in both categories in the AL.
With their next 27 games against teams below .500, there’s no reason the Twins can’t keep this torrid pace going.
