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.”