Twins top Padres to win series behind strong games from Joe Ryan, Byron Buxton

There isn’t much left to be decided for the Twins this season, but this might be one thing: Who is the Twins’ MVP of 2025?

Byron Buxton and Joe Ryan were the Twins’ representatives at the All-Star Game in July, and they are the team’s runaway leaders in Wins Above Replacement through five months. By Baseball Reference’s calculations, they came into Sunday tied at 4.3 WAR.

One thing that’s certain, though: When both are at their best, it’s hard to beat the Twins.

Buxton, who homered and doubled in five at-bats, and Ryan, who pitched seven scoreless innings and struck out eight, proved it again Sunday, leading the Twins to a 7-2 triumph over the San Diego Padres at Target Field and winning the series against a team almost certainly headed for the postseason.

Buxton had the three hardest-hit balls of the game, including a 108-mph smash that was speared by shortstop Jose Iglesias for an out. Buxton made up for that one two innings later by blasting a pitch from lefthander Kyle Hart off the upper-deck facing in left field. The two-run homer was his 29th of the season, setting a career high, and his 84th at Target Field, tying him with Max Kepler for the most home runs in the ballpark’s 16-season history.

“Almost every day, you come in and he’s doing something even more impressive, or setting some new mark and doing something great,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. “He had great at-bats all day long.”

Including in the fifth inning, when Buxton cracked Wandy Peralta’s first pitch 111 mph into deep right-center, a double that sparked a three-run inning and all but cinched Ryan’s 13th victory, tying a career high.

Ryan didn’t come close to allowing a ball to be hit as hard as Buxton’s. The righthander, who surrendered an uncharacteristic 11 runs over his previous two starts, recorded only two 1-2-3 innings Sunday, but he was a master of working out of trouble, leaving runners stranded on third base three times.

“Joe was fantastic. They’ve got good hitters, up and down the lineup,” Baldelli said. “Joe went right at them. He had his good, explosive stuff today.”

His seventh and final inning was perhaps the most impressive. After giving up a leadoff double to Jake Cronenworth, who moved to third on Iglesias’ groundout, Ryan struck out Freddy Fermin and, on the eighth pitch of a battle between All-Stars, fanned Fernando Tatis Jr.

“It’s a good way to end it — with a strikeout. A good heater. I’ll take it,” said Ryan, who walked off the field to a standing ovation from a significant portion of the announced 26,956 in attendance after recording his fifth scoreless start of the season but first in two months. “That was nice. Thank you, crowd.”

BOXSCORE: Twins 7, San Diego 2

Ryan, who has pitched 155 innings this season with a month to go, said he has been feeling that workload lately, which helps explain his previous two starts. He made important adjustments to his training routine this past week, he said.

“I’m so tired. I mean, I’ve just been physically not feeling like myself for the last couple,” said Ryan, who will soon surpass his career high of 161⅔ innings. “We did a couple of things differently this week, and I felt a little bit better.”

Good enough to throw a season-high 104 pitches, 75 of them for strikes.

“That’s what the baseball season is kind of all about. He stood up to it pretty well — I mean, just look at what he was doing in the seventh inning,” Baldelli said. “That tells everyone watching all they need to know. I don’t think the hitters who faced him thought he looked tired.”

Royce Lewis also played a starring role in the Twins’ first series victory since the Kansas City Royals visited Aug. 8-10. Lewis singled twice, each time with a runner in scoring position and two outs, to widen the Twins’ lead. His two RBI gave him 18 in August, the most by any Twin. Luke Keaschall collected his 17th RBI of the month, driving in Buxton with a fifth-inning single.

The loss, San Diego’s fourth on its six-game road trip, kept the Twins’ record of success intact: They have never lost a series to the Padres at Target Field, and this one was particularly damaging to the visitors, who entered the day one game behind the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NL West title chase.