A would-be grand slam hooked just foul Monday afternoon at Comerica Park. So Twins slugger Nelson Cruz kept swinging. The picture of persistence, Cruz wound up getting his grand slam and then some against the Tigers.
With the bases loaded in the top of the second inning against Tigers starter José Ureña, Cruz initially lifted a 1-0 pitch to the right-field corner, and the ball sailed to the right of the foul pole. After a video replay review confirmed that the ball did not strike the pole, Cruz swung at the very next pitch — an 84.1 mph slider low in the zone — and punched it out to left-center field.
There was no need to review that one. The 377-foot line-drive had clearly crossed over the wall for Cruz’s first homer of 2021. The grand slam gave the Twins a 6-0 lead.
Later, when leading off the top of the fifth, Cruz struck again. This time, facing Tigers reliever Buck Farmer, he smashed a 92.4 mph fastball high and deep to left for a 418-foot solo shot.
The two Cruz homers were hit 114.6 mph and 116.6 mph. Cruz, Giancarlo Stanton (Oct. 6, 2020) and Matt Davidson (March 29, 2018) are the only players with two 114+ mph homers in a game since Statcast began tracking in 2015. Cruz’s fifth-inning long ball is the hardest hit by a Minnesota player in the Statcast era, breaking Kennys Vargas’ record 116 mph homer from June 10, 2017. The knock also marked Cruz’s second-hardest-hit homer since 2015 (he slugged a 116.8 mph homer on Sept. 27, 2017, while with the Mariners).
As if the above weren’t enough, Cruz doubled in the sixth inning. Per Baseball Reference, it marked just the 18th time in history that a player age 40 or older had 10 or more total bases in a game.
Cruz had been relegated to pinch-hit duties in the Twins’ first three games of the season in Milwaukee due to the lack of a designated hitter. So he had to wait patiently for his first start. Then he had to wait through the replay review. A two-homer, five-RBI day was worth the wait.