Kansas City, Mo ? Jacque Jones knows that trying to belt home runs is just about the worst thing a hitter can do.

Nevertheless, it’s hard to think about anything else when a guy’s riding a streak like this one.

Kansas City's Raul Ibanez singles to score Chuck Knoblauch in the first inning. Regardless, the Twins beat the Royals, 8-6, on Thursday in Kansas City, Mo.

Jones led off the game with a home run for the third time in four nights Thursday, sparking the Minnesota Twins to an 8-6 victory over the Kansas City Royals.

“Let’s not talk about me,” said Jones, who has hit four of his nine leadoff homers against the Royals. “I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t think about it. I just try to put the ball in play and see what happens.”

Cristian Guzman homered and ran his hitting streak to 20 games and Luis Rivas hit a two-run shot as the Twins beat the Royals for the 12th time in 16 games.

“The type of team we have, the offense we have to work with, you know we can score,” Jones said.

Jones knocked the second pitch from Runelvys Hernandez (3-2) over the fence in left for his 23rd homer.

“Jacque Jones has done that against us all year,” Royals catcher A.J. Hinch said. “He comes out of the gate locked in.”

Hernandez felt particularly victimized.

“I threw him a two-seamer down and away. I can’t believe that,” he said. “It was a good pitch.”

Guzman followed Jones’ leadoff homer with a double that stretched his hitting streak to the best for the Twins since Shane Mack’s 22-game streak in 1992.

Guzman was 3-for-4 with three RBIs, with an RBI single in the fifth and a two-run homer off Darrell May in the seventh. Raul Ibanez made an outstanding running catch of Guzman’s sinking liner into right field in the eighth. Had he missed it, the speedy Guzman may well have had a triple and would have hit for the cycle.

“He told me he would have stopped at third,” said Minnesota manager Ron Gardenhire. “He said it was too hot to go all around the bases. Ibanez made a fine play on that ball.”

Rivas hit a two-run homer off May in the eighth. Three of his four home runs this year have come against the Royals.