Things went sideways for the Minnesota Twins fairly early in Friday night's game against the Philadelphia Phillies -- a 10-4 loss at Citizens Bank Park.
But it wasn't all bad. Max Kepler hit his first home run of the season, as did Jorge Polanco. In fact, Polanco went 5 for 5 and provided fans with MLB's first cycle this season and 11th in Twins history:
The last Twin to hit for the cycle prior to Friday night was Michael Cuddyer in 2009 against the Brewers at the Metrodome. Here's the full list of Twins to hit for the cycle:
Rod Carew - 5/20/70 - at Kansas City
Cesar Tovar - 9/19/72 - vs. Texas
Larry Hisle - 6/4/76 - at Baltimore
Lyman Bostock - 7/24/76 - at Chicago
Mike Cubbage - 7/27/78 - vs. Toronto
Gary Ward - 9/18/80 - at Milwaukee
Kirby Puckett - 8/1/86 - vs. Oakland
Carlos Gomez - 5/7/08 - at Chicago
Jason Kubel - 4/17/09 - vs. Los Angeles
Michael Cuddyer - 5/22/09 - vs. Milwaukee
Jorge Polanco - 4/5/19 - at Philadelphia
Here are his hits, in order:
Twins PR man Dustin Morse passes on that Polanco was using Eddie Rosario's bat:
...which makes things even more humorous, since Rosario had been using Marwin Gonzalez's bat in recent action.
Here are Polanco's postgame comments to Fox Sports North's Marney Gellner and assembled reporters following Friday night's game:
Briefly
KSTP's Darren Wolfson hears that the Twins are calling up pitcher Zack Littell prior to Saturday afternoon's game. It'll be interesting to see if the Twins thin out a six-man bench (under NL rules) with a series in New York against the Mets coming up, or if they swap out for a fresh arm. If that's the case, it'll almost certainly be Ryne Harper sent out.
Even with Friday's loss, the Twins have opened the season 4-2. Just once in the last five years have the Twins started out this strongly -- going 5-1 in the first six games of the 2017 season. By the end of that April, however, they were already 12-11.
Only one team (Detroit) has fewer home runs than the Twins (three).
Only two teams have fewer steals than the Twins (one) -- Toronto and Cincinnati.
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