Minnesota Twins’ Byron Buxton becomes a league leader in home run/steals combo

DETROIT - Byron Buxton’s home run Saturday, his eighth in the past two weeks, moved him past Aaron Judge and into the American League lead.

Not that lead.

Buxton also stole second base, the fifth time this season he has done both in a game, one more than the Yankees’ slugger. He’s tied with the Brewers’ Christian Yelich for the major league lead.

The stolen base during the 10-5 loss to the Tigers was also Buxton’s 15th of the season without being caught and extends his streak of successful steals to 20, dating to early May of last season. Only four Twins have successfully stolen 20 consecutive bases — something Buxton has now done three times, including the team record of 31 in a row from 2017-19.

“He just gets to full speed so fast. Like one step, and he’s at top speed,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. “Great sprinters are like that, too.”

Buxton was somehow thrown out in back-to-back games by White Sox catchers Martín Maldonado and Korey Lee on April 30 and May 1, 2024 — but has otherwise been perfect since September 2021, 41-for-41.

And at 108-for-120 for his career, Buxton is also the only player in major league history with more than 100 steals and a 90% success rate.

“As good as it gets,” Baldelli said. “Watching him run is one of the joys of our game.”

One other thing about Buxton’s 3-for-4 day was unusual. He served as the Twins’ designated hitter.

It’s only the second time this season he’s done so, and the first came in a doubleheader, when Baldelli didn’t want Buxton, who has played in 66 of the Twins’ 83 games this year, to play 18 innings in the outfield.

It may happen more often, Baldelli said. Well, a little more often.

“To see him be able to move to the DH spot and still go up there and have the same types of excellent at-bats, that’s a good sign,” Baldelli said. “There might be some days where we have him over there. Never a bad thing to get him going and feeling good when he is the DH. He likes playing in the field, but when he’s the DH, it’s nice to know he’s going to be good with it. And after a day like this, I’m sure he will be.”

The Tigers’ deep fly balls were a big problem for the Twins on Saturday, and they didn’t even have to clear the fence to do damage.

In addition to four home runs, the Tigers scored three times with sacrifice flies, bringing home runners from third base in the second, fourth and seventh innings. And those outs-for-runs are becoming oddly common against the Twins.

The Tigers’ trio, by Matt Vierling, Colt Keith and Zach McKinstry, brings the total of sacrifice flies given up by the Twins to 32 this season, more than every American League team except the A’s, who have given up 34. It’s a recent trend — half of them have come in June, with 12 in the past nine days alone.

Obviously, the best way to prevent sacrifice flies is to keep runners from reaching third base with fewer than two outs. But once that happens, is there anything pitchers can do to prevent them?

It’s tricky, Baldelli said, because in those situations, “pitchers want to attack and get a punch-out [strikeout].” And for most pitchers, that usually means throwing pitches high in the strike zone — the sort that hitters most easily lift into the air.

“You know that almost any contact, there’s a decent chance that the run is going to score. So you try to get ahead, get a swing-and-miss ahead of anything else,” Baldelli said. “Elevating fastballs is going to be one way you’re going to get into those good counts, but you leave yourself open. I haven’t focused on the fact that we’ve given up a bunch of sac flies, but that’s obviously part of it.”