Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve got a series-opening win on our hands! The top half of the lineup woke up, Joe Ryan battled through some cold middle innings, and the bullpen worked around some very poor Twins defense, but a win is a win!
Things were looking good through three innings. Joe Ryan was perfect and the Twins finally broke through in the bottom of the third for three runs, sparked by Byron Buxton and Luke Keaschall, both of whom had struggled immensely in the first week+ of the season. Buck
led off with a sharp double followed by an infield single by Trevor Larnach. Keaschall then worked an eight pitch walk to juice the bases with no outs. A pop-up and sac fly induced fears of a wasted opportunity, but Matt Wallner and Royce Lewis worked a couple two-out hits to give the Twins three runs in the inning.
Detroit was finally able to get some baserunners off Ryan in the fourth, however. An error by Brooks Lee let rookie phenom Kevin McGonigle reach to start the inning, and things spiraled a bit from there. Ryan walked a couple of Tigers and surrendered a double to Colt Keith to get the Tigers on the board, then a big two-run single from Zach McKinstry knotted the game up at three. Luckily, Ryan was able to get the next two Tigers swinging to end the threat.
The wind was out of the sails, but Luke Keaschall brought it right back the next inning. After a soft Larnach single, Keaschall finally got ahold of his first home run of the season, and 367-foot line drive that had just enough to clear the left field wall on a frigid night, and the Twins never looked back.
The Tigers’ best threat to come back came in the 8th when Kody Funderburk walked three straight to start the inning. Luckily, a botched double steal on a pitch that went over the Tigers’ batter head allowed the Twins to gun down one of the runners, leaving only two on base and one out for Cody Laweryson, who got the next two Detroit batters to end the threat.
Bad base-running by the Tigers and some nifty work by Laweryson saved the Twins, but manager Derek Shelton probably needs to reevaluate his Fundy-centric bullpen plan. Funderburk was excellent after the deadline last year and has been solid to start this season, but he’s getting very overexposed very early on. 12 of 16 pitches from Fundy in the 8th were balls, and only one pitch was a surefire, in-the-zone strike. After pitching in seven of the first 10 games this season, he’s likely just tired.
With things too close for comfort, the Tigers did the Twins the favor of issuing three straight four-pitch walks. Victor Caratini dropped a soft single just over the infield to plate two more Minnesota runs and that was all she wrote.
STUDS
- Luke Keaschall: 1-3, 1 HR, 2 RBI, 2 BB
- Victor Caratini: 2-4, 3 RBI
- Trevor Larnach: 2-4, 2 R
- Matt Wallner: 2-5, 1 2B, 1 RBI
DUDS
NO DUDS BABY THAT’S A TWINS WIN
The dreaded Tarik Skubal matchup is up next. But to poorly paraphrase a little someone named Anthony Edwards:
They got Tarik Skubal, but we got Taj Bradley.
