power trip

With his fourth home run in three games, Matt Wallner powered Minnesota to a comeback 7-5 win at Toronto on Tuesday night and joined some rather select company. The ex-Southern Miss star, from Forest Lake, Minn., became the fourth native of the North Star State to hit 20 bombs in a season. He joins Hall of Famers Joe Mauer and Dave Winfield along with Twins legend Kent Hrbek in that club. Wallner’s three-run homer in the ninth inning Tuesday came against Blue Jays closer Jeff Hoffman and gave the Twins a 7-4 lead. Seven of Wallner’s 14 hits this month are home runs, and most of them were tape-measure blasts. On Monday, he hit two against Toronto ace — and future Hall of Famer — Max Scherzer in a Twins loss. “Wally is a fun player to talk about,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli told mlb.com after Monday’s game. “Nobody really impacts the ball the way he does except for maybe five guys, maybe 10.” … It was a big night for big flies from Mississippians in the majors and minors: Colt Keith, Biloxi High alum, hit his 12th — as part of a 3-for-5 night — in Detroit’s 7-6 loss in 10 innings against the A’s. … Former Mississippi College standout Blaine Crim belted his 20th Triple-A bomb of the season, his second for Albuquerque in the Colorado system. Crim’s homer came against Mississippi State alum J.P. France, pitching for Houston’s Sugar Land club, which won the game 6-4. … USM product Reed Trimble hit his 12th homer of 2025, going yard for Double-A Chesapeake (Baltimore). The Tupelo native has hit eight homers in Double-A, two in Triple-A and two in the low minors in a peripatetic campaign. … Kemp Alderman, the 2023 Ferriss Trophy winner at Ole Miss, smacked his 14th homer for Double-A Pensacola (Miami); the Decatur native has four in August after hitting just one in July. … And Mississippi Braves alum Ozzie Albies hit two homers for Atlanta — his first two-homer game in more than two years — powering the Braves to an 11-2 win at Miami. The switch-hitting Albies, who has 12 homers on the year, hit one from each side, getting his first as a righty hitter all season. P.S. Hurston Waldrep, former USM and M-Braves star, battled for 5 1/3 innings (one run allowed) in Tuesday’s game and stood to get the win before the Atlanta bullpen coughed up a late run. Waldrep is 4-0 with an 0.90 ERA in his five appearances this season. Lightly recruited out of his Georgia high school in 2020, Waldrep went 7-2 in two years at USM — a good baseball school, by the way — before transferring to Florida. On the Braves broadcast it was noted that he still has the ball from his first college victory in 2021.