Minneapolis MN – The small steps forward keep coming for the Minnesota offense.

The first step was to get a blowout in the books — and that happened in Game 1 of the Twins’ series against the White Sox. The next step was to claw back for a last-second comeback victory — and they did that in Game 2. The following element in the sequence, evidently, was for the deeply slumping members of the lineup to start showing signs of life — and that came Wednesday.

Birthday boy Willi Castro celebrated his 27th with an early three-run homer and a hustle double, while Christian Vázquez added three hits and Max Kepler continued his resurgent return from the IL as one of the more complete offensive showings of the season led to a 6-3 victory over the White Sox at Target Field behind a season-high 13 hits by Minnesota’s bats.

“To be honest, I think … it’s the best birthday I’ve had so far,” Castro said.

Granted, not many Twins hitters have been off to particularly productive starts this season, but it had been rough sledding for a handful of the club’s bottom-of-the-order hitters, including Castro (.538 OPS entering Wednesday) and Vázquez (.392 OPS). Might as well throw Kepler in there, too, considering he’d been 1-for-20 before hitting the IL on April 9.

But this series against a scuffling White Sox squad offered as good a chance as any to turn that around, and they took advantage.

“Really, the middle to the bottom of our lineup did a pretty good job of hitting balls hard, of taking some tough pitches, getting on base and ultimately helping us win the game,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “So I give them a lot of credit.”

It was a needed sight for Minnesota when the bottom of the lineup got the scoring started in the second inning, when a Carlos Santana leadoff walk, an Austin Martin double and a Vázquez RBI single set up Castro to crush a Garrett Crochet slider into the left-field home run porch to give the Twins a 4-0 lead, marking the third consecutive game in which they scored first.

“To be honest, when you’re struggling, you just try to go out there and try to get a hit,” Castro said. “That’s probably why there’s a lot of swing and miss, because just trying to go out there and get a hit. That’s when the slump comes. I just think if you go and trust yourself, get a good pitch to hit, everything will come out natural.”

Castro later added a hustle double in the fourth inning for his second multi-hit game in his last three appearances, while Manuel Margot (.521 OPS entering the day) also collected two hits for his second multi-hit game of the season and Vázquez hit three singles for his first game of the season with multiple knocks.