MINNEAPOLIS -- Faced with a major early-season test against one of the elite teams in the American League, the surging Twins passed with flying colors.\n\nLed by a homer and four RBIs from former Astros catcher
“We try to keep a loose clubhouse and that kind of plays into it,” Castro said. “When things aren’t going well, we don’t get too down. We just try to bounce back the next day, and we’ve done a nice job of that.”\n\nHere are three takeaways from a big series win at Target Field:\n\n**1\\. Twins' rotation shows high upside against powerful Astros**\n\nThe eye-popping numbers of the Twins’ offense have garnered much of the attention early this season, but Minnesota’s series victory over the powerful Astros was just as much about dominant starting pitching as it was about continued production from the offense.\n\n
“It's a great run, and we just played four against what might be one of the best offenses in baseball,” Baldelli said. “Just seeing our guys have that success, go out there and try to attack them and live in the zone, because you're really not going to beat a team like this pitching consistently out of the zone. You have to throw strikes. You have to attack them.”\n\nThe Twins entered the series against the Astros with four starts longer than six innings this season; they added three more of those in just these four games against Houston, which entered the series in MLB’s top three in batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage.\n\nMinnesota’s rotation combined for six quality starts during the seven-game homestand against the Orioles and Astros, and, for the most part, aggressively attacked the strike zone, collecting a combined 39 strikeouts and allowing only four walks.\n\n“That’s something we try to stress -- not necessarily forcing the issues, but in certain situations, it’s, ‘Here’s my good stuff, let’s see how it matches up,’” Castro said when asked about the squad's pitching strategy. “That’s huge. Definitely don’t want to pitch away from contact. We’ve done a nice job trusting ourselves and done a nice job executing what we’ve set forth prior to the game.”\n\n**2\\. This offense doesn’t need homers to get it done**\n\nThe Twins shattered a club record with 50 homers before May 1 and entered Thursday second in the AL in percentage of runs via homers, having scored 52.4 percent of their runs this season with the long ball. But they showcased a different side of their offense in the final two games of the series, scoring only three of their 14 total runs in those games with homers.\n\nNotably, Minnesota kept the ball in the yard as it scored six runs in their fourth-inning offensive spree against Peacock on Thursday, sending 10 hitters to the plate and tallying RBI hits from Schoop, Castro,
The Twins made hard contact on pitches in the zone throughout the inning, which has been the primary focus of the team’s aggressive strategy at the plate this season. There were six batted balls that inning classified as hard-hit (greater than a 95 mph exit velocity), including all four run-scoring hits,
\n\nNelson Cruz's 115.5 mph RBI double was the hardest-hit ball by a #MNTwins batter since June 2017.
— Do-Hyoung Park (@dohyoungpark) May 2, 2019
\"Of course, there's been some home runs hit this year already,” Baldelli said. “We know that and we've talked about it a lot. But I think with that we haven't seen some of the other things that our guys are capable of. The at-bats were quality, and I think they kind of added up, and they really came out in that inning and obviously were able to put a few runs on the board.\"\n\nMoreover, the Twins continued to hit for extra bases, notching four doubles, two triples and a homer among their 10 hits on Thursday. Minnesota entered the game with extra-base hits on 48.1 percent of their hits this season, the highest mark in the Majors.\n\n**3\\. Gonzalez, Castro come through against old team**\n\nThe two former Astros in the Twins’ lineup both got off to slow starts in 2019, but they both played important roles in Thursday’s series-clinching victory.
“I’m not trying to do too much,” Castro said. “I’m trying to put good swings on it. I’ve done some other things to try to be more consistent with posture at the plate. It’s been feeling good.”\n\nThanks to Castro’s improving performance and continued production from