Carlos Santana capped off a huge series against the Kansas City Royals with his biggest game yet. He reached base all five times he came to the plate Sunday, hitting two home runs and driving in four in the Cleveland Indians’ 10-3 victory.

Huge series

In the four-game series in Kansas City, Santana was 9-for-14 (.643) with five home runs and eight RBI. He reached base safely 15 times over the four games.

Five HR in Single Series
Indians History

Santana is the first player in baseball this season to homer five times in a series and only the sixth player in Indians history to do it. He also homered on Tuesday, giving him six homers in his pyyast six games. That’s more home runs than 20 teams over that span.

Four of Santana’s five homers in the series came against fastballs, including two on Sunday from Yordano Ventura at 97 and 100 mph.

Santana has four home runs this season on fastballs of 95 mph or faster, tied with Josh Donaldson for most in MLB. He has eight such homers over the last two seasons, two more than anyone else.

Turning his season around

After hitting only .159 with a .628 OPS over the first two months this season, Santana has turned his season around. His performance against fastballs has been a big reason why.

Santana is hitting a MLB-best .422 against fastballs (2/4-seam) since the start of June. He hit only .189 against those pitches over the first two months of the season.

Carlos Santana vs Fastballs
This Season

Looking ahead

Despite Santana’s performance against the Royals, the Indians took just one of four games against Kansas City and have lost six of their past eight games overall.

Cleveland is 6.5 games behind the Tigers in the AL Central and 3.5 games back in the wild-card race. According to numberFire.com, the Indians have a 17-percent chance to make the playoffs this season.

But is Cleveland’s best baseball ahead? Last season, the Indians were 4.5 games back in the wild-card entering September and finished the season 21-6 to grab the first of two AL wild-card spots.