Twins return home with 9-4 rout of Royals for third consecutive victory

They’re not exactly the “new” Twins, given that eight players in the starting lineup were on the team in April. But Friday’s 9-4 thrashing of the Royals sure felt like the Target Field debut of something different, didn’t it?

One week after dismantling a team they expected to contend for the postseason, the Twins faced — and ultimately, charmed — their home crowd for the first time. Talk about a crowd-pleaser: Six Twins collected two or more hits, five of them drove in runs, and the Twins won their third consecutive game for the first time in more than a month.

They even had fireworks when it was over.

“The first couple of days, it was different. Now it’s just like, ‘Let’s go!’ ” said the usually low-key Matt Wallner, who got it all started with a 434-foot opposite-field home run. “It’s as good a vibe as we’ve had all year. It’s been a lot of fun.”

Not everything feels new, of course. Joe Ryan dominating the Royals? That feels like a “Seinfeld” rerun, we’ve seen it so often. Ryan coughed up a 418-foot home run to the first batter he faced, Kansas City outfielder Mike Yastrzemski, but never allowed another Royals batter to touch third base in his five-inning stint.

That improved Ryan’s record to 8-0 in 10 career starts against Kansas City, and he’s given up only nine runs in those 10 starts, a 1.34 ERA.

“I really don’t think about anything like that, good or bad,” Ryan said. “I’m not going to think, ‘If I just throw every pitch down the middle, I’m going to get a good result.’ You’re still got to pitch.”

Keaschall has also reached base in all 10 games, and except for the April 25 game in which he fractured his forearm during his first plate appearance, has a hit in each of them, too.

“He’s a good hitter — it starts with good ability. He’s always hit. He hit all the way up, and now he’s hitting in the big leagues,” said Twins manager Rocco Baldelli — who opened his career in 2003 with hits in each of his first 11 games. “It’s not hard to see why. It’s great to see a guy just come up and play the game. See the ball, hit the ball and whack line drives all over the field.”

The Twins scored three runs in the first inning, two more in the second, and another pair in the fourth, on Kody Clemens’ home run onto the right-field plaza. They strung together four hits, two of them doubles, in the sixth inning, but scored only twice when two runners, Wallner and Clemens, were thrown out at home plate.

Which was OK with the manager.

BOXSCORE: Twins 9, Kansas City 4

“That’s going to happen at times, when you want to be aggressive and you want to force the action,” Baldelli said, pointing out that the Twins owned a 7-2 lead at the time. “Because we gave ourselves a cushion, you give yourself the ability to be aggressive. You can force the other team to make plays at that point. We’ve benefited from playing aggressive and pushing the envelope and trying to take extra bases and score runs. So I’m kind of getting used to watching that from our guys overall, and I like it.”

He likes to see Ryan Jeffers contribute a three-hit night, score three times and catch all nine innings amid suffocating humidity on a 90-degree night, too, and Royce Lewis drive in a pair, his first multi-RBI game since July 22.