MINNEAPOLIS — Pablo López was only on the injured list for 16 days, but he might not have recognized the Twins he rejoined Friday. With their Opening Day starter back on the mound, the Twins provided him with more runs to work with than in his three previous starts this year — combined.

Byron Buxton and Trevor Larnach each homered, Larnach added a double and Buxton a triple, and Minnesota walloped the Los Angeles Angels 11-4 at Target Field.

Maybe the Twins’ highest-scoring game of this season was in retaliation, because the Angels inflicted what may be a bigger loss than one game. Rookie Luke Keaschall was hit with an 86.8-mph sinker during the first inning, and the Twins said after the game he had a broken right forearm. Keaschall, in just a week since being summoned from Class AAA, had quickly become an important cog in the Twins’ offense, batting .368 on 7-for-19 hitting.

The Twins were actually outhit by Los Angeles 10-8, but Angels starter Kyle Hendricks provided the offense with a turboboost: five walks, a career high for the soft-tossing 12-year veteran. Three of them came in the fourth inning, when Larnach’s three-run homer, his fourth of both this season and this week, capped a six-run inning, the Twins’ biggest since Aug. 21.

It was the continuation of Minnesota’s domination of the Angels. Last year, the Twins won five of six games against the southern Californians, and scored 50 runs, or 8.3 per game, in doing so.

Mickey Gasper replaced Keaschall as Minnesota’s designated hitter, and was himself hit by a Hendricks pitch two innings later. But Gasper went on to collect a single and double, each of them driving in a run, in his next two at-bats, his first two-hit game in the major leagues.

Still, it was Buxton’s night that the small crowd of 14,332 will remember. The center fielder hit his team-leading sixth home run into the upper deck in left field, a third-inning blast of 419 feet. He drove in another run an inning later with a sacrifice fly, then knocked a pitch to the opposite field into the right-field corner, his second triple of the season.

All the offense made what might otherwise have been a tense return for López far less of a scramble. The right-hander needed 101 pitches to get through five innings, and only once did he retire the Angels in order. A walk and two singles in the second inning scored a run, and after Jorge Soler doubled in the fifth inning, Mike Trout singled him home.

The Angels also hit a pair of solo home runs off the Twins’ bullpen, with Logan O’Hoppe connecting off Louie Varland, and Trout hitting his ninth of the season off Cole Sands. Trout’s shot gave him home runs in consecutive games at Target Field, which doesn’t sound particularly unusual until you realize his last game here was on Sept. 25, 2022. Injuries have kept him from playing in Minnesota in either of the past two seasons.

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