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Twins tie MLB record for fastest team to reach 100 homers in a season

Mark Townsend
·Yahoo Sports Contributor

The Minnesota Twins are mashing their way into the history books in 2019.

With Miguel Sano's third-inning home run during Friday’s 11-4 win against the Chicago White Sox, the Twins became only the second team in Major League Baseball history to hit 100 home runs in the first 50 games of a season.

The other team?

The 1999 Seattle Mariners, which featured Hall of Famers Ken Griffey Jr. and Edgar Martinez, along with Alex Rodriguez and Jay Buhner.

Not bad company.

The Mariners would go on to lead the league with 244 home runs in 1999, but finished with only 79 wins.

The Twins are aiming to crush those numbers, particularly in the win column. Minnesota entered the weekend with a league-leading 33 victories. But they wouldn’t mind breaking some home run records along the way.

Record-setting pace

It was just last season that the New York Yankees set the team record with 267 home runs.

The 2019 Twins are currently on pace to hit 324 homers this season. In other words, if they keep this up they’ll pass the Yankees before Sept. 1.

Here are some other 50-game franchise records they broke on Friday.

For the record, Eddie Rosario hit Minnesota’s 99th homer and Max Kepler hit No. 101, with both coming Friday.

It might seem unlikely the Twins will be able to continue at this pace. But also keep in mind that the weather hasn’t even gotten warm yet, and that Sano came off the injured list only this week. He blasted five homers in his 29 plate appearances and has the potential to take Minnesota’s lineup to yet another level.

The Twins have been known to hit homers in bunches as well. In Thursday’s win against the Angels, they hit eight as a team. It’s the second time they’ve hit eight in a game this season after only once doing it in the franchise’s first 48 seasons.

Leading the charge

Some new faces have helped contribute to the Twins onslaught. But four of the team’s top six home run hitters — Eddie Rosario (15), Max Kepler (11), Mitch Garver (9) and Jorge Polanco (9) — are familiar faces.

Newcomers C.J. Cron (13), Jonathan Schoop (10), Nelson Cruz (7) and Marwin Gonzalez (5) have added another dynamic, boosting an offense that needed 98 games to hit 100 home runs last season.

The offseason focus on adding power has definitely paid off for Minnesota. The only question now seems to be can the league find a weakness to expose in Minnesota’s lineup.

If it can’t, the home run numbers might get truly absurd.

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