Price, Tigers too much again for Twins

Momentum in baseball is like ghosts — most people say they don't believe it exists. But the Twins thought they could detect a little bit of a breeze at their back as they returned to Target Field on Monday, on the heels of three wins in four games, for an 11-game homestand.

It was gone before the Twins even came to the plate.

"We wanted to get off to a good start," manager Paul Molitor said. "It didn't happen."

No, home runs happened. And David Price happened. And the Twins' fourth loss in four games against the Tigers happened, this time by a 5-4 score.

"It was an uphill battle," Brian Dozier shrugged after Detroit broke the mood by belting Twins starter Tommy Milone for four first-inning runs. "But good teams find ways to come back and win."

He meant that optimistically, not as an indictment of his team's inability to complete the rally, but the truth is, the Twins had chances. Most notable was the ninth inning, when Jordan Schafer led off with a single and was bunted to second base. That brought up Dozier and Torii Hunter to face Tigers closer Joakim Soria, and both were foiled by startlingly sloooow pitches, a 75-miles-per-hour rainbow to Dozier and a 67-mph curve to Hunter.

"I knew he was probably going off-speed — he throws a lot of cutters, maybe the slider — [but] I wasn't expecting the eephus thing he throws," Dozier said. "I picked it up right out of his hand, and it kept fading and fading … I guess it was just a little slower than I thought."

The Twins' entire April has been slower than they thought, after breaking camp convinced that they might be better than advertised. But Price punctured that new-beginnings enthusiasm by shutting them out on Opening Day and three weeks later, he was only less dominating by degree. The Twins made him work a little harder, but Price was still Price: six hits, seven strikeouts, and hardly any sense that the Twins might beat him, especially after Milone's disastrous first.

"It's a tough mountain to climb when you're facing a guy like David Price," Molitor said.

That mountain was four runs high before the Twins could get into the dugout. The game's second batter, shortstop Jose Iglesias, homered into the flower pots in left field just as the Target Field crowd of 18,054 sat down. After a single and a walk, Yoenis Cespedes blasted a fastball into the Twins' bullpen. And suddenly, Price had all the cushion he needed.

"He's a good hitter," Milone said of Cespedes, his teammate when both were Oakland A's. "You can't leave the ball over the plate, or he's going to do what he did today."

The Twins did plenty right, giving their home crowd hope. Leadoff doubles in the first and fifth innings turned into runs, and the Twins chased Price, who has beaten them six times in their last seven meetings, with another run in the seventh. Another leadoff double in the eighth inning, a historic one by Joe Mauer — the 313th of his career, surpassing Kent Hrbek for third, behind Kirby Puckett (414) and Tony Oliva (329) in Twins history — cut the lead to just one.

Meanwhile, the Twins' defense turned four double plays, threw out Iglesias at the plate trying to score on a sacrifice fly, and caught two runners trying to steal, including — and Molitor chuckled at the bizarre thought — "Miguel Cabrera trying to steal third base with two outs."

Even the Twins' bullpen was good, if unsteady; Tim Stauffer and Blaine Boyer combined to throw five scoreless innings.

But none of the good things that follow will matter if the start is bad. The Twins hope that's not true of their season, too.