ANAHEIM, Calif. >> Kyle Farmer didn’t think much of it when he left a tangy summer sausage that he received as a gift from Cloverdale, whom he did an advertisement for last year, on a table in the Twins’ clubhouse.

Maybe a hungry teammate would grab it and have a nice snack.

Instead, it seems as if that sausage has turned into a good-luck charm for the Twins, who have turned their season around with seven straight wins and now make sure to tap the sausage before they head to the plate.

“Maybe it’s because of the sausage that it’s all happening in the first place,” manager Rocco Baldelli surmised.

Perhaps it is, seeing as the sausage first appeared in the dugout while Minnesota was getting shutout against the White Sox earlier in the week. The Twins had been held scoreless for the first five innings of Thursday’s game. But once the sausage appeared in the dugout, they rattled off five straight hits.

Why, exactly, did the sausage make its way into the dugout in the first place?

“I guess Pop grabbed it and brought it in the dugout,” Farmer said, referring to hitting coach David Popkins. “I hope it lasts the whole year and doesn’t get moldy or anything.”

Hey, whatever works.

The Twins’ sluggish start had seen them spend the first 20 or so games as the worst-hitting team in the majors. But the offense finally seems to have started clicking — in their last seven games, they’ve scored at least five runs in each, highlighted by a 16-run outburst on Saturday against the Angels. On Sunday, for the second straight day, they collected 17 hits.

Eagle-eyed observers first noticed the sausage when it was flipped to first baseman Carlos Santana after he hit his third home run in as many days on Saturday.

As he approached the dugout, Santana leapt up and snagged it.

“It worked,” Santana said. “Everything in baseball, when it works, we do it.”

Later in Saturday’s game, right fielder Max Kepler was also seen clutching the link in the dugout after hitting his first home run of the season.

“Everyone touches it before we go to the plate,” Farmer said. “You just kind of tap it. Every at-bat. … It just happened kind of organically.”

The sausage — yes, the Twins only have one — resides near the bat rack in the dugout during games. It was stashed in catcher Ryan Jeffers’ bag on the way to California. Jeffers suggested that, at some point, the original item might need to be replaced by a non-perishable sausage.

The Twins’ manager is all for it — “it’s bringing us lots of hits and runs,” Baldelli noted, though he shares some of the same thoughts that Jeffers has.

Yes… we apparently have a HR Sausage now.

No… we don’t know why. pic.twitter.com/KTFEzSsLsW

— Minnesota Twins (@Twins) April 28, 2024

“I’m not even an adult, but slightly concerned as more of an adult than maybe some of the people in the other room that the package is going to open up and the thing hasn’t been refrigerated in many days,” Baldelli said. “There is no doubt when that thing opens up, whoever is touching it is in deep trouble. There is no doubt in my mind that we are carrying around something that is very, very unhealthy to the human body.”

This is Minnesota’s second sausage-related storyline this season as center fielder Byron Buxton was nearly run over by one of Milwaukee’s famous racing sausages earlier this season.

That led Farmer to proclaim it “the year of the sausage.”

“I guess we’re going to keep touching the sausage,” Farmer said. “Baseball players are messed up.”

Many of her teammates played a full season overseas since the Minnesota Lynx were last in action.

Diamond Miller, meanwhile, played one game in Hungary, her time overseas cut short by needing knee surgery.

The second-overall pick in the 2023 WNBA draft, Miller anticipated spending the offseason working hard to further develop her game after a rookie campaign that saw her average 12.1 points, 3.5 rebounds and 2.5 assists in 26.1 minutes per game in 33 contests and be named to the league’s All-Rookie Team, along with center Dorka Juhász.

Instead, Miller took a long-term career view of having the surgery versus trying to play through the problem.

“This is the best I’ve been feeling since the surgery,” the second year forward said Sunday on the opening day of Lynx training camp. “We’re just constantly working through it, constantly talking to my doctors, talking to (Trainer) Chuck (Barta) doing what I need to do off the court to make sure I can play on the court.”

It took about six months for Miller to get prepared for the rigors of the upcoming 40-game season; that included dribbling while sitting.

“It’s definitely tricky when you’re injured (and) you’re not capable of playing to your full abilities, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get better, it doesn’t mean you can’t work on the
game, it’s just modified,” she said.

If one didn’t know, coach Cheryl Reeve said you couldn’t tell Miller is coming off surgery.

“Players like Diamond are so competitive,” Reeve said. “Diamond hasn’t played in a very long time, but players like that think they can get right back to where they were the last time they played. I think she looks very good. She did everything.”

The Lynx open the regular season on May 14 in Seattle, three days before the teams meet in Minnesota’s first home game. However, the Lynx have their lone home preseason game on Friday.

Backcourt stabilization

Kayla McBride should again start at shooting guard, but the point guard position has been bolstered by the acquisitions of veteran guards Natisha Hiedeman and Courtney Williams.

For Williams, the energy Minnesota showed in wanting her, was key in her wanting to sign with the Lynx as a free agent for her ninth season. The Lynx facilities are also a plus.

“It’s top tier,” she said. “It makes you want to get in the gym, it makes you want to get better.”

Williams started every game the past three seasons for Atlanta (2021), Connecticut (2022) and Chicago (2023). For her career, she’s averaged 12.1 points and 5.4 rebounds per game.

“We really needed Courtney, just her energy, her effort, her intangibles that are not always on the stat sheet, is something that she brings to the table, and it’s something us young cats
constantly need,” Miller said.

Williams knows she’ll be a “talker” on the team.

“I like to show up every day and run my mouth, so I can lead by example,” she said as Miller stood beside laughing. “I’m definitely going to be a voice so she can see it and everybody else can hear and feel it, as well.”

Hiedeman, a five-year veteran acquired from Connecticut via trade, started 40 games for the Sun last season, averaging 8.5 points and 2.7 assists. She is a career 39.2% 3-point shooter, an area where Minnesota struggled last season.

Reeve sees more than just an offensive upgrade with the new additions.

“The defensive side of having some athleticism and speed means we’re going to be able to dictate a little bit more, be a little bit more bothersome at the point of a team’s offense,” Reeve said. “The ability to penetrate and get to the 3-ball there were some really good moments with that today.”

ANAHEIM, Calif. >> For the first three innings of Sunday’s game, the Twins’ offense was held quiet. While that might have been a cause for concern earlier this season, these days, it’s impossible to keep Minnesota down for too long.

The suddenly surging Twins offense broke out in the middle innings of Sunday’s game on the way to the team’s major league-leading seventh straight win. With a11-5 win against the Los Angeles Angels, Minnesota finished a second-straight series sweep and is now over .500 at 14-13.

For the second straight day, the Twins scored double-digit runs and collected 17 hits. Four different players — Ryan Jeffers, Jose Miranda, Christian Vázquez and Willi Castro — finished with three hits apiece.

Miranda, who hit a pair of doubles, drove in the Twins’ first run of the day in the fourth inning, bringing home Byron Buxton, who reached on an Angels’ error, one of three on the day for Los Angeles.

An inning later, the Twins broke through against Angels starter Reid Detmers when rookie Austin Martin capped off a seven-pitch at-bat that saw him go from down 0-2 to working the count full before singling in two runs. Two more runs scored in the inning, giving the Twins a healthy cushion.

It was needed because things came crashing down around Twins starter Pablo López. López, who saw his velocity dip a couple miles per hour in his last start, erased concerns about that by averaging 96.4 mph on his four-seam fastball. He struck out six of the first nine batters he faced and retired 14 straight before he ran into trouble.

With two outs in the fifth, a Logan O’Hoppe double marked the first Angels baserunner of the day against López. Jo Adell followed with a double of his own and the next two batters, Luis Rengifo and Nolan Schanuel, homered. The laborious inning brought the Angels (10-18) back within a run and ended the starter’s day.

Though the game became close briefly, Minnesota was able to tack on late. The Twins were 1 for 19 on the season with the bases loaded before Alex Kirilloff’s pinch-hit, ground-rule double in the seventh inning broke things open once more, pushing Minnesota’s lead back to three runs.

The Twins added another pair of runs in the seventh and two more in the eighth to put the game out of reach and send them back to the Midwest as winners of seven straight.