CHICAGO — There are a lot of professional resources for professional baseball players these days. Not only do major league teams have a phalanx of in-house pitching and hitting coaches, they often work with private coaches and facilities.

And when Christian Vazquez got to June this season hitting well under .200, the Twins catcher left no stone unturned. When the Twins traveled to Phoenix and Seattle in late June, he used the opportunities to visit Driveline Baseball facilities in Scottsdale, Ariz., and Bellingham, Wash.

“They found a couple things that helped me a lot,” Vazquez said.

He has been an above-average hitting catcher for most of his career, batting .290 in 99 games with Boston in 2017, and .276 with a career-high 23 home runs and 76 RBIs for the Red Sox in 2019.

But Vazquez bottomed out on June 1, when he was hitting .161 after going 0 for 3 with a strikeout in a 5-2 loss at Houston, where he won a World Series ring in 2022 after a midseason trade from Boston. His performance behind the plate was typically sharp, but his batting weighed on him.

“Everybody wants to hit,” Vazquez said. “That’s part of our job, to produce and help the team win. It’s better when you produce and help the team in every part of your game.”

So, in addition to working with the Twins staff, Vazquez visited Driveline — where he worked in the offseason — during Twins trips June 25-30. The results were immediate. In his first three games in July, Vazquez was 6 for 12 with two home runs, a double and five RBIs.

Since July 1, the Twins catcher is batting .308 with a .577 slugging percentage in 17 games after going 1 for 3 with a homer, one of just three Twins hits in a 7-3 loss to the Cubs on Tuesday night.

“He’s a gamer, man, in every sense that we understand that word. That’s what he is,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “So, I think some of that was hard for him to kind of just handle in general, and then decide what he’s going to do about it. He’s not going to take it lying down.”

Buxton remembers Bean

Bryon Buxton was among those thinking of Billy Bean on Tuesday when the former major leaguer and ground-breaking LGTBQ+ advocate died of cancer at age 60.

Buxton worked on Major League Baseball’s “Shred Hate” campaign, an anti-bullying campaign that Bean spearheaded while working as MLB’s vice president of Social Responsibility & Inclusion in 2018. Buxton recorded a PSA for the project.

“The ‘Shred Hate’ thing, he was a big advocate for that. I just remember him trying to spread the love of what was going on,” Buxton said Wednesday. “And it was something you gravitate to — and just the person he was. He went a long way. He touched a lot of hearts.”

Buxton was out of the starting lineup for a third straight day, nursing a lower back injury suffered when he collided with the center field wall while making a big catch in Sunday’s 13-7 victory over the White Sox.

“Buck has been down for a couple of days and still getting better,” Baldelli said.

Correa ‘ramping up’

Buxton wasn’t the only key component missing from the Twins’ three-game series at Wrigley Field. All-star shortstop Carlos Correa, out since before the all-star break with plantar fasciitis in his right foot, continued rehab in Minnesota on Wednesday.

“He’s ramping up his running right now. He’s not sprinting yet,” Baldelli said. “When he’s able to sprint and run the way he needs to, he’s going to go on a rehab assignment and go get some at-bats. Then he’ll be on his way back at that point. He has not hit that point yet.”

The Twins have been without key players all season, including infielders Royce Lewis and Jose Miranda, reliever Brock Stewart and Justin Topa, an offseason trade acquisition expected to be a big part of the bullpen. Out since spring training, he was scheduled to pitch for Class AAA St. Paul on Friday.

“We don’t want to complain because complaining takes us in the wrong direction,” Baldelli said. “I would love to have all those guys out there, but we have today who we have today. Friday, we’ll probably have a different group of players who are able to help us. That’s all that we can worry about.”

The Cubs begin a four-game series against first-place Cleveland with a double-header Friday at Target Field.

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