The Twins had traffic all afternoon, put runners on in every inning, and still walked away with another one-run loss. Detroit beat Minnesota 5-4 on Labor Day, and the story was familiar: missed chances, four double plays, shaky defense, and just enough offense to make the whole thing sting a little longer.
Minnesota did strike first. Luke Keaschall was hit by a pitch, Brooks Lee followed with a hard single to center, and the two of them pulled off a double steal to move into scoring position. Kody Clemens struck out, Ryan Jeffers brought home one run on a fielder’s choice, and Josh Bell then rolled into a double play to shut the door on the inning.
Joe Ryan was back on the mound and gave the Twins something workable, even if the start was messy. The club kept him to 65 pitches after just one short rehab outing, with rookie left-hander Connor Prielipp lined up behind him. Ryan needed 43 pitches to get through the first two innings and gave up three runs, but it could have gone a lot worse.
He opened by striking out Colt Keith on three pitches, then made a mistake to AL ROY favorite Kevin McGonigle, who punished a heater in the middle of the plate for Detroit’s first run. The second inning got wild.
Ryan allowed a leadoff triple, struck out Spencer Torkelson, then ran through a brutal four-pitch stretch: a walk to rookie Max Clark, a hit-by-pitch of light-hitting rookie John Peck, another hit-by-pitch to Keith that forced in the go-ahead run, and then a soft grounder from McGonigle that turned into another run when Royce Lewis’ throw home pulled Jeffers off the plate. Ryan stopped the bleeding after that, but the damage was already done.
From there, he settled in and retired six straight Tigers, including three strikeouts, before finishing four innings and 66 pitches. For a return that functioned as his second rehab appearance, it was a solid enough outing.
His velocity was there, and outside of the McGonigle homer - the only hard-hit ball he allowed - he mostly held up. Better defense behind him, and the Twins might have been in position to steal it.
Prielipp then took over and looked strong in his own right. He allowed a two-run homer to All-Star Riley Greene, but still turned in four efficient innings and kept showing the kind of stuff that has people paying attention. He’s already 40 innings beyond his 2025 career high and has blown past the 58 innings he threw from 2020 through 2024 combined, yet the results have been enough to make a 2027 rotation look realistic and ease some of the bullpen concerns some evaluators had pegged him for.
The offense kept trying to drag Minnesota back. Trevor Larnach cut the deficit to one in the fourth with a laser that barely cleared the wall.
Then, in the sixth with the Twins trailing 5-2, they finally put together some two-out offense. Larnach singled again, Kaelen Culpepper ripped a single to left on the next pitch, and Walker Jenkins put together his best at-bat as a Twin by working a full count before drilling a double into the right-center gap for two runs.
Max Clark’s speed saved Detroit from a bigger mess, as he slid over and cut the ball off before it could race all the way to the wall in the spacious Comerica Park gap.
Minnesota had one more opening after Tyler Kinley came in, but the inning fell apart the same way so many others did. Keaschall and Lee both reached, Clemens stepped up with the bases loaded, and watched a fastball go right down the middle to end the threat with the Twins still down 5-4.
The rest of the night was more of the same. Minnesota had chances in every inning after that, but the final three frames all ended with double plays, killing whatever momentum had started to build. In the ninth, the Twins got one last shot: Clemens drew a leadoff walk, Jeffers launched a fly ball that carried about 400 feet to dead center but stayed in the park, and Bell grounded into another double play to finish it.
The box score says Minnesota left 10 men on base, but that number doesn’t tell the whole story because double plays don’t count there. The Twins reached base in every inning and had multiple runners on in five of them, yet only scored three runs in those innings with traffic. With three weeks left, that’s the kind of detail that has them well outside the playoff picture.
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