TORONTO -- Matt Wallner is a must-see at-bat. Blink at your own peril.
There was aggression of the best kind in Wallner’s swings on Monday night, when he launched two first-pitch home runs against Max Scherzer in the Twins’ 10-4 loss to the Blue Jays at Rogers Centre. These were no-doubters, too, the types of swings you get from a true power hitter.
“Wally is a fun player to talk about,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “Nobody really impacts the ball the way he does except for maybe five guys, maybe 10. Anywhere you look, you're not going to find guys that take swings quite like his. … I don't miss really anyone's swings or anyone's at-bats, but those are some that you always want to see, because he might hit a ball like he hit today.”
He’s done it more often than not this season, but the past couple of games have been a welcome boost at the tail end of a solid month of August. Monday marked the first multi-homer game of Wallner’s season, and the second of his four-year career.
Doing it against a likely future Hall of Famer added meaning to the moment too.
“He's one of the best pitchers of this generation, definitely,” Wallner said. “And he's still doing it pretty well. He won the first at-bat, executed the pitches. Then when he missed, I was able to take advantage of those pitches more down the middle.”
A strikeout against Scherzer to open the second inning was all the reasoning Wallner needed to be aggressive on mistakes. He got them right out of the gate in his following at-bats, and he provided the kind of impact his manager spoke of after the game.
The first one was a hanging slider, which Wallner sent a Statcast-projected 419 feet to right-center field with a 105.9 mph exit velocity for a fourth-inning solo homer. The second made the first look modest, as Wallner clobbered a middle-middle fastball 432 feet to right at 111.8 mph off the bat for a two-run blast that cut the Blue Jays’ lead to two runs and momentarily put the Twins back in it.
Both blasts came on the first pitch. Why wait when you know you’ve got it?
“Wally can have a day like this, really, on any day,” Baldelli said. “He has that type of swing, type of ability. A two-home-run day against Max Scherzer, it's saying something. No matter what you do in your career, for your entire career -- you could play 20 years -- that's one you will not forget. That one will stay with you.”
“I think it's just a learning process,” Wallner said. “Playing more, playing more against lefties, and just getting more at-bats overall, is always a good thing. There’s been some ups and downs, but learning to battle through that is part of playing in the big leagues.”
Coming out of the tougher moments is a crucial part of that process.
Prior to his homer on Sunday against the White Sox, Wallner recorded a 3-for-24 stretch with just two extra-base hits over eight games. He responded in kind, finding a welcome spark to get back on track. Wallner now owns a 1.011 OPS in 17 games this month, firmly putting his June woes behind him.
“He finds his way on base in a lot of different ways,” Baldelli said. “He's a guy that can change the game really quick and put runs on the board really fast.”
That was the case in the series opener against the Blue Jays, but the night was a struggle for the rest of the Twins’ offense, which mustered just three more hits beyond that pair of homers. On the other side, Joe Ryan endured another unusual rough start, allowing six earned runs -- four in the first inning -- and allowing two homers over five frames.
Wallner’s heroics weren’t enough for this one, but he’ll have another chance tomorrow. You won’t want to miss it.