Baserunning, bullpen mistakes cost Twins in 10-8 loss to Tigers

No one was spared. Not Trevor May. Not Tyler Duffey, Not Sergio Romo. Not Devin Smeltzer.

It didn't matter who manager Rocco Baldelli summoned Sunday, his bullpen was going to treated like a playpen.

The relentless attack on Twins relievers allowed Detroit to overcome a four-run deficit for a 10-8 victory at Target Field. The Tigers' 17-hit attack was the most against the Twins pitching staff this season, as five players had at least two hits.

"Every guy that came in seemed to give up something whether you wanted to or not," Duffey said. "It was just going to happen."

The Twins and Tigers will wrap up this five-game series Monday with a Labor Day afternoon affair. The Twins have a chance to win four of the five games, but Detroit leads the season series 4-3 and has not looked overmatched facing the defending AL Central champions.

The Twins scored four runs in the fifth inning Sunday — and might still be batting if Eddie Rosario hadn't ran through third base coach Tony Diaz's stop sign and gotten thrown out trying to score from first on Brent Rooker's bases-loaded double.

Even then, the four-run inning was the Twins' biggest inning since Aug. 12, and it came on a day Baldelli didn't start Byron Buxton, Nelson Cruz, Josh Donaldson or Marwin Gonzalez.

"We played a pretty good ballgame for about half the ballgame, maybe a little bit beyond that," Baldelli said, "but it went in a direction that we haven't seen very often."

Willi Castro clubbed a two-run homer and Grayson Greiner added an RBI single off May in the sixth to get within 6-5. After Rosario's RBI single gave the Twins a 7-5 lead, Duffey gave up two-out RBI singles to Jeimer Candelario and Castro in the seventh that tied the score.

Romo went out for the eighth and gave up the tiebreaking homer to Greiner, a backup catcher who came in hitting .108 this year. Smeltzer replaced Romo with two outs and the first four batters he faced reached, with two scoring.

Rosario hit a solo homer in the eighth — capping a game in which he ran the stop sign and forgot the ground rules on Jonathan Schoop's drive down the line in the eighth, leading to a triple — but the Twins saw their five-game winning streak end.

"Some of it didn't play out great and some of it was probably just not being as sharp as we would want," Baldelli said. "We couldn't get the outs. We just couldn't get these guys out. They just kept putting the ball in play and having good swings. It seemed like really regardless of what we did, it didn't go the way we wanted."

"That's the good thing," Duffey said. "We all know that today was the anomaly. I think we come back tomorrow — obviously some guys threw more than others, so they won't be up for whatever it may be — but I don't think it changes, approach-wise."