Baserunning, bullpen mistakes cost Twins in 10-8 loss to Tigers - Minneapolis Star Tribune

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No one was spared. Not Trevor May. Not Tyler Duffey, Not Sergio Romo. Not Devin Smeltzer.

It didn’t matter who manager Rocco Baldelli summoned on Sunday, his bullpen was going to treated like a playpen.

The relentless attack on Twins relievers allowed Detroit to overcome a four-run deficit and hand them a 10-8 loss at Target Field. The Tigers’ 17-hit attack was the most against the Twins staff this season, as five Detroit players had at least two hits and the unit scored eight runs after the fourth inning.

“Every guy that came in seemed to give up something whether you wanted to or not,” Duffey said. “It was just going to happen.”

The Twins and Tigers will wrap up the series Monday with a Labor Day afternoon affair. The Twins have a chance to win four of the five games, but Detroit currently leads the season series 4-3 and have not looked overmatched against the defending AL Central champions.

The Twins scored four runs in the fifth inning on Sunday — and might still be batting if Eddie Rosario hadn’t ran through Tony Diaz’s stop sign and gotten thrown out trying to score from first on Brent Rooker’s bases-loaded double.

It was the most runs they’ve scored in an inning since Aug. 12, and it came on a day manager Rocco Baldelli rested a few regulars.

And, for the Twins, it was avalanche of runs against a Tigers team that had held them to 15 runs over previous six games in the series. The Twins led 6-2 at the time, with Rich Hill getting through five innings. They seemed to have the game in hand.

“We played a pretty good ballgame for about half the ballgame, maybe a little bit beyond that,” Baldelli said, “but it went in a direction that we haven’t seen very often.

Willi Castro clubbed a two-run homer and Grayson Greiner added a RBI single off Trevor May in the sixth to get within 6-5. After Rosario’s RBI single gave the Twins a 7-5 lead, Duffey gave up RBI singles to Jeimer Candelario and Castro in the seventh that tied the game.

Romo went out for the eighth and gave up a homer to Greiner. Devin Smeltzer replaced Romo with two outs and allowed the first four Tigers batters he faced to reach base, with two scoring.

Rosario added a homer in the eighth — capping a game in which he ran the stop sign and forgot the ground rules on Jonathan Schoop’s drive down the line in the eighth, leading to a triple — but the Twins saw their five-game winning streak end.

“Some of it didn’t play out great and some of it was probably just not being as sharp as we would want,” Baldelli said. “We couldn’t get the outs. We just couldn’t get these guys out. They just kept putting the ball in play and having good swings. It seemed like really regardless of what we did, it didn’t go the way we wanted.”

The unit has been effective for most of the season, and they entered Sunday with a 3.53 ERA that was sixth lowest in baseball. They aren’t used to seeing every reliever fail in the same game, and both Duffey and Baldelli sounded baffled at how Sunday’s game took at hard turn after they took the four-run lead.

“That’s the good thing,” Duffey said. “We all know that today was the anomaly. I think we come back tomorrow — obviously some guys threw more than others, so they won’t be up for whatever it may be — but I don’t think it changes, approach-wise.”

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Baserunning, bullpen mistakes cost Twins in 10-8 loss to Tigers - Minneapolis Star Tribune
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