The Twins didn’t just take care of business against the Tigers on Tuesday night. They turned the game into a blowout so fast that the final score almost feels like a typo: 15-2, with Minnesota stacking runs in bunches and finishing the job after a slow start.
Detroit actually struck first, but Kody Clemens answered right away with a solo homer to tie it in the opening inning. That was about as calm as things got for the Tigers.
Minnesota didn’t do much for a few innings after that, then finally cracked through in the fifth and never looked back. By the time the dust settled, the Twins had piled up 14 runs between Tigers tallies and dropped a 10-run sixth inning on Detroit.
Troy Melton gave Minnesota a brief headache early, even with the Twins having hit four home runs against him back in June. After Clemens’s 108-mph shot to right and Ryan Jeffers’s triple, Minnesota couldn’t cash in. Melton then retired 10 straight hitters and kept the game tied until the fifth.
That inning changed everything. Trevor Larnach opened with a walk, Royce Lewis hammered a first-pitch fastball 108 MPH to left for a double, and Minnesota suddenly had a real chance to break things open with runners on second and third and nobody out.
Kaelen Culpepper grounded out, but Walker Jenkins put a ground ball to short that turned into chaos. Larnach got caught in a rundown trying to score, Dillon Dingler’s throw sailed past third, and both Larnach and Lewis crossed the plate on the error.
Luke Keaschall followed with an RBI double, and just like that, the Twins were up 4-1.
The sixth inning was where the game fully unraveled. Josh Bell singled, Larnach was hit by a pitch, and Lewis stepped in with two aboard.
Detroit left a first-pitch slider in the middle of the plate, and Lewis punished it, sending a 427-foot blast to dead center for his 14th homer of the season. That made it 7-1, and the inning was only getting started.
Culpepper doubled, Jenkins walked, and Keaschall delivered another RBI hit. Brooks Lee added a sacrifice fly, Clemens drew a walk, and then Jeffers crushed a slider over the middle and hooked a three-run homer off the left-field foul pole. Minnesota was suddenly up 12-1 after scoring eight in the inning.
And the Twins still weren’t finished. Bell and Larnach reached again, Lewis chipped in an infield single, and Culpepper ripped a 107-MPH single through the left side for two more RBIs. When the inning ended, Minnesota had hung 10 runs on the board and owned a 14-1 lead.
On the mound, the Twins got what they needed from their opener setup. Andrew Morris handled the first inning, allowing two singles and a sacrifice fly as Detroit grabbed a 1-0 lead. Then Connor Prielipp took over in the second and settled the game down.
Prielipp had one tense moment when Spencer Torkelson led off the second with a ground-rule double and Max Clark was hit by a pitch, but he escaped by getting Javier Báez to ground into a double play and John Peck to ground out. That was the biggest threat Detroit managed against him.
Prielipp worked five innings, allowing three hits and one walk while striking out five. He also committed a fielding error in the fifth, but he kept the Tigers from adding on and gave Minnesota exactly the kind of bridge performance it needed.
The bullpen handled the rest. Travis Adams threw a clean seventh, Garrett Acton made his first appearance after being called up when rosters expanded, and Ben Ross got his first taste of the majors at third base.
Ross struck out in his first major-league at-bat, but it was still a milestone moment for the September call-up. Detroit added one more run in the eighth, but the game had been over for a long time.
Minnesota has now won three straight and, at least for the moment, has steadied itself after a rough stretch last week. The Twins still have ground to cover if they’re going to turn their late-season playoff hopes into something real. But this was the kind of night that can change the mood in a hurry.
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What makes the chase even more interesting from a Minnesota perspective is that this has become more than a one-player feat. The Saints now have 12 players with at least 10 home runs, a spread-out attack that has kept the lineup dangerous all season and left them within reach of the all-time minor league single-season home run mark held by El Paso. For a Twins organization that values depth and internal options, this kind of production is hard to ignore. [Read more 🡒]