Miguel Sano, Twins blunder to win as Tigers make even bigger mess of final play

The Twins' latest thrilling, game-winning play could have been a rally-killer in about three different ways on Tuesday night. But like a driver who totals his car in a crash yet walks away unscathed, Rocco Baldelli said he prefers to focus on the positive.

"We made some boo-boos on the bases, and we somehow made our way out of it and smell like roses," the Twins manager said after a bizarre series of even-worse Tigers mistakes delivered Minnesota's second consecutive walkoff victory, this one 5-4 over Detroit. "Once in awhile you walk away and you just kind of throw your hands in the air, and you smile, and you take the win."

Trailing by a run in the ninth but with two runners on base, Miguel Sano lined a long fly ball to deep right-center, a catchable ball that instead glanced off Robbie Grossman's glove for a hit just in front of the warning track.

When Trevor Larnach was held at third base and Sano charged three-fourths of the way toward second, Gio Urshela was caught between the two. A baserunning out, and potentially even a game-ending double play, appeared inevitable.

But Tigers catcher Eric Haase, jogging toward the traffic jam at third base, tossed the ball over Jeimer Candelario's head and into left field. Larnach and Urshela both scored before the Tigers could retrieve the ball, and the Twins' bench erupted again, just as it did two days earlier after Byron Buxton's walkoff home run.

"This is one of those days where it's probably not worth breaking it all down," Baldelli said. "I don't know what I'm even talking about right now, but that sums up the last play of the game and the result."

The bizarre finish handed the Twins their fifth consecutive victory, matching their longest winning streak of 2021, and lifted them above .500 for the first time in more than a year, since they were 5-4 on April 11, 2021.

When the ball was hit, Sano said, "I've been thinking, 'He catch it,' " and why wouldn't he? The first baseman has been caught in another April slump, batting only .078 as he came to the plate in the ninth, with just four hits all year.

Facing the 100-mph fastballs of Tigers closer Gregory Soto, however, "he hit it so hard that basically the outfielder ends up misplaying it," Baldelli said. "You take one step or two steps that are just not full speed after the ball, and the ball beats you to the spot, and it makes it a tough play because he hits the ball so hard."

It fooled Larnach, whose initial instinct was to tag up. "It looked like [Grossman] was going to catch it, so I tried to get back," Larnach said. "And it was a circus from there."

Haase's unforced error gave a surprise ending to a more conventional pitcher's duel that appeared won by home runs — by both sides.

Max Kepler doubled home one run, the first the Twins have scored in Chris Paddack's three starts, then smashed a two-run homer to give the righthander a lead.

But Emilio Pagan, acquired in the same trade with the Padres as Paddack, surrendered a three-run home run to Javier Baez in the eighth, giving the Tigers a temporary lead of their own.

On a night when Byron Buxton, Carlos Correa and Jorge Polanco combined to go 0-for-11 at the top of the batting order, the Twins nevertheless appeared headed to victory most of the game thanks to Paddack. His one run allowed over 5⅔ innings lifted the Twins' rotation back atop the AL's ERA standings; their 2.60 starters' ERA is more than a quarter-run better than the Yankees' 2.87.

Paddack had been on the mound for two of the Twins' three shutout losses this year, negating his own reasonably efficient pitching. But handed a lead for the first time this year, Paddack wasn't about to squander it. He threw 30 strikes among a stretch of 32 pitches from the third inning to the sixth, including all 14 in the fourth inning.

He left with a 3-1 lead and the Twins appeared headed to victory. But when Derek Hill and Grossman led off the eighth with a single and a walk against Caleb Thielbar, Rocco Baldelli summoned Pagan, who saved back-to-back games last week, to extinguish the rally.

Baez foiled that plan, lifting a low-and-outside splitter from Pagan into Detroit's bullpen, the first three-run homer allowed by the Twins' bullpen all season.

The circus ending turned Baez's big homer into a footnote.

"We got the win," Urshela said. "It doesn't matter how."