Tigers find late run to escape with 5-4 victory over Twins

Ninth-inning run the difference in Twins' fifth straight loss.

The Twins found themselves in another tie game in the ninth inning Friday night.

Tied 4-4, reliever Caleb Thielbar quickly retired the first two Detroit Tigers batters he faced. That's when things started to go haywire. Parker Meadows hit a single to right field, and Thielbar's pickoff attempt to first baseman Carlos Santana was off the mark, allowing Meadows to advance to second.

The Twins intentionally walked Mark Canha the next at-bat, leaving Wenceel Perez up the bat with the go-ahead run in scoring position. Perez hit a single up the middle to break the 4-4 tie that had stood since the sixth inning. Tigers reliever Jason Foley struck out Byron Buxton and got Santana to ground out before walking Willi Castro, who stole second to get the tying run in position.

But Foley got Christian Vazquez to fly out to end the inning, and the Tigers escaped Target Field in Minneapolis with a 5-4 victory while handing the Twins their fifth straight loss.

"Not a hard call," Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said of the decision to intentionally walk Canha. "I feel like he can pitch to the young guy Perez that ended up hitting the ball up the middle, but I'm going to bet on Caleb there every time."

The Twins (6-12) took a 2-1 lead in the third inning when Trevor Larnach hit a two-run, 415-foot shot to right-center field, his first homer of the season. That scored Alex Kirilloff, who reached on a double. Larnach went 2 for 4 on the night, his first multihit game of the season.

The Tigers (11-9) plated one run in the ninth inning when Kerry Carpenter slid into home after Spencer Torkelson's infield single. Edouard Julien's throw to Vazquez was off the mark when Carpenter scored, but Torkelson got thrown out attempting to take second base, ending the inning.

The Tigers found back-to-back RBI singles off Twins starter Joe Ryan in the third inning, coming from Perez and Carpenter that made it a 3-2 game. That came after Ryan had walked Parker Meadows; ball four of that at-bat was a fastball that went right down the middle of the plate.

"The strike?" Ryan said when asked about the pitch to Meadows postgame. "I mean, especially just to see where the game goes and to see we would have won the game. One call, I mean, fastball down the middle is, yeah, it's tough ... but I'm not blaming the umpire for that, it's just frustrating. I guess it kinda goes with the bloop hits all day where it's like sometimes how it shakes out."

Carpenter later hit another RBI single in the sixth inning off of Ryan that made it a 4-2 Tigers advantage. Ryan went 5 1/3 innigns in all, allowing seven hits and four runs while striking out two.

"Joe pitched pretty good. I thought Joe pitched good. I have no idea what his final line was or anything like that. I really liked what I saw from him," Baldelli said. "First run that scores in the game — we need to play better baseball and finish the inning for him. So I think there’s more worlds than not where he gets through that inning clean."

Tigers starter Jake Flaherty, who allowed just four hits and two runs while striking out 10 across six innings, walked Edouard Julien to open the sixth inning, and then Ryan Jeffers hit a fly ball to right field that Perez couldn't handle, allowing Jeffers to take first, then second. After Kirilloff and Larnach struck out, Buxton broke an 0-for-32 stretch against the Tigers with a double that scored both Julien and Jeffers to tie the game at 4-4.

That's where the score remained until Perez's single plated the go-ahead run.

"We’re playing a lot of slim margin games. We’re playing a lot of one-run, tight ball games. We have to play clean, if we don’t play clean we’re just gonna hand baserunners and potentially runs to the opposition. We’re not in a position to be doing that right now," Baldelli said. "Hopefully — everyone makes mistakes in the game, I want to be clear, like we play a lot of baseball, the game’s played at a high rate of speed, there’s a lot going on out there.

"Nobody is going to play perfect baseball, even the best teams in the game, but when you’re struggling to score runs the way we want to and the way we think we can, we just have to pitch and play better defense to make up for it at the moment.”