Twins' six-run rally not enough against Tigers, who win on back-to-back homers in ninth

It's nights like these, facing the challenge of a great pitcher, trying to string together rallies, throwing runners out at the plate, when the mind really wanders.

If the Twins were in the playoff race, if the Tigers were their antagonists once more, if these final seven head-to-head games between them were critical to bringing playoff games to Target Field, the intensity would heat up Monday night's 50-degree chill to a bonfire sweat.

Sigh.

Instead, the smallest crowd in Target Field history bundled up and tried to encourage its last-place team: Maybe the Twins could dig their way out of one night's deficit. Maybe they could stick out a leg and trip up the Tigers as they look to October.

"Those guys never give up over there," Torii Hunter said after his dramatic ninth-inning home run broke a 6-6 tie and lifted Detroit to an 8-6 victory. "That's the Twins way."

Nice of their former star to say, but the Twins way hasn't worked for a few years now.

Monday, the Twins chipped away at defending Cy Young Award winner Max Scherzer, preyed upon Detroit's bullpen and overcame a 6-0 deficit. But Hunter and Miguel Cabrera opened the ninth inning with back-to-back home runs, Hunter's coming on Casey Fien's first pitch, and the Tigers maintained their 1½-game lead over Kansas City, which recorded its own ninth-inning rally to beat the White Sox 4-3.

The Twins played like the game meant something to them. But even so, it was hard not to notice which team was pretending.

"Not only do you owe it to your own fans, you owe it to baseball and everyone involved to go out and give it everything you have," Twins manager Ron Gardenhire said. "Our guys have been doing that."

The game would have been a classic, a dogfight — if both teams were jockeying for the postseason. "Close games, late-inning home runs, clutch hits, defensive plays — that's what it's all about," Hunter said. "That's what fans come to see."

Maybe, but fewer come to Target Field all the time. Monday's game was the first in the five-year-old ballpark's history in which fewer than 20,000 tickets were sold, but at least fans got their money's worth.

The announced crowd of 19,700 saw Scherzer look unhittable for four innings, but the Twins gradually figured out a way to get to him. Detroit, with the second-highest scoring offense in the majors, beat up spot starter Anthony Swarzak for 11 hits over 4⅓ innings in jumping out to a 6-0 lead, but a game Twins pitching staff wriggled out of trouble often enough to make a comeback feasible.

It began with Oswaldo Arcia's fifth-inning solo blast, then with three runs off Scherzer in the sixth inning, two coming when Joe Mauer drilled the ninth pitch he saw to center for a two-run single. Mauer drove home two more with a single off Phil Coke in the eighth inning, completing the Twins' big comeback.

"Joe Mauer almost beat us himself," Hunter said.

It took only one pitch for Hunter to prevent it. He pounced on a Fien slider and pounded it into the Tigers bullpen. Moments later, Cabrera did the same.

"We're showing we can compete with them," Fien said. "They're No. 1 right now, but we've got a young group, and we're showing our character here."

Maybe so. But wins, not character, gets you to the postseason.