Twins give up late lead, lose 6-4 to Tigers

“I put a good throw there; it just skipped past McCann”. After sleeping on it, I arrive at the same conclusion. “Tonight was a tough one”.

Cabrera leads the AL with a.337 batting average but is hitting.244 against the Twins this season.

That might be an understatement.

The Twins had an opportunity to move within a half game of the Houston Astros last night, but with their loss they are now 1.5 games back.

Given a lead, Mike Pelfrey proceeded to strugggggggle, as is his wont. “It just so happened to hit the grass”. He’s 0-6 with a 6.87 ERA in 12 road starts since winning at Cleveland on May 8. Opponents have hit.347/.397/.484 (.881).

All six Tiger runs came after the fourth inning.

The first four innings were over in roughly 45 minutes, as both offenses struggled. After back-to-back walks to Miguel Sano and Trevor Plouffe, Torii Hunter grounded a ball to the left side of the infield.

Standing on third, Rosario messed around with Kinsler at second base, faking that he was going home on a pop-out by Kurt Suzuki. But Rosario took advantage, as he darted home on the play to surprise Kinsler, whose flat-footed throw got past catcher James McCann to allow Rosario to score on an unusual sacrifice fly that barely left the infield. Escobar leads Major League Baseball in triples with 15. He also threw out J.D. Martinez at third in the second inning, his 16th assist of the year. The 3-2 pitch was another slider – the sixth in a row – and Davis took it the opposite way and into the first row of the stands. That started the big inning, ” he said, admitting the delay got to him. Ian Kinsler then hit a ground-rule double, a lucky break as Gose may have scored from first base.

Glen Perkins followed its path for a moment or two and then dropped into the deepest and saddest of crouches. Before the All-Star Game, Perkins was 0-1 with a 1.21 earned run average with 28 saves. It’s disappointing. This whole second half for me has been torture.

Perkins stayed in for the 8 inning. However, he struck out the next two batters.

Rajai Davis showed some fight.

“I brought Perk in thinking we could get four outs from him and set it up for our closer”, Minnesota manager Paul Molitor said, one eye on the Angels-Mariners game.

That’s a pretty rare feat for Pelfrey, the least likely pitcher on Minnesota’s staff to strike out a batter. Last night, it was a combination.

Joe Mauer’s span of 43 games reaching base came to an end as Minnesota managed two hits, dipping its average in Detroit to.180 with 1.9 runs per game this year.

Matt Boyd couldn’t have been in a better groove. “Just look at the extra-inning games we’ve won”.

Before the Cleveland series, I thought that the Twins would need to go 10-3 over their final 13 games to make the playoffs.

The Twins are now 78-75.

Three of those have come in the past week. “It’s unfortunate I let it get away from me”.

“I was hoping that, because of the fan interference, they might send him back to second, but they didnt, ” Ausmus said.