Brooks Lee homers from both sides of the plate, but Twins still lose to Red Sox

Someone should remind Carlos Correa: Wally Pipp had a headache, too.

OK, maybe Correa’s spot in the lineup isn’t in jeopardy the way Pipp’s was more than a century ago. But one day after providing a game-winning single, Brooks Lee did a pretty remarkable Lou Gehrig impression — well, if Gehrig had been a switch hitter — when the Twins shortstop came down with a migraine Tuesday night. Though the Twins ultimately lost to the Red Sox 8-5, the game will be remembered at Target Field as the night that Lee drove in all five runs with three hits, including home runs from both sides of the plate.

“I don’t hit homers, and I don’t hit ’em from both sides of the plate on the same day,” Lee said after hitting his ninth and 10th home runs of the season. “So that was pretty cool.”

Pierson Ohl will remember the night for something else, and who could blame him? Less than 24 hours after receiving a life-changing phone call in his Toledo hotel room, Ohl made his major league debut for the Twins — and struck out three Red Sox in the first inning, the first Twin ever to do that.

“Yeah, that’s a pat on the back of, ‘Hey, when you execute your stuff, it’s good enough,’” the 25-year-old righthander said breathlessly. “Especially with those three guys in the lineup, it was like, ‘Wow, here I am!’”

Ohl, called up after Chris Paddack, Tuesday’s scheduled starter, was traded to Detroit on Monday, looked fearless in that 20-pitch first inning. He completed a three-pitch strikeout of leadoff hitter Roman Anthony with a changeup on the outside corner, got three-time All-Star Alex Bregman to swing at a 2-2 cutter well outside the strike zone and, after allowing a Jarren Duran double, responded by whiffing cleanup hitter Trevor Story on a 3-2 changeup that dropped below the strike zone.

The Red Sox went out in order in the second inning, though not quietly. Wilyer Abreu crushed a 91-mph fastball 409 feet and over the center field wall — but Harrison Bader brought it back with a run-stealing catch.

But Ohl, the Twins’ 14th-round pick in the 2021 MLB draft, couldn’t get through Boston’s lineup a second time; in fact, the Red Sox hit for the cycle in the third inning. Ceddanne Rafaela’s one-out triple set the tone, with Anthony immediately singling him home. Bregman doubled, and though Ohl struck out Duran, Story took advantage of a 3-2 changeup in the middle of the zone to cap the four-run inning with a 404-foot home run into the bullpens.

“I think I got a little careless. Having that success early, I kind of went away from living on the edges and living down in the zone,” Ohl admitted. “I mean, I’m in the big leagues now. You leave pitches up, and they get hit hard. Going forward, I’m not taking a pitch for granted.”

Boston tacked on a few more runs, one on Duran’s monster blast, a 446-foot homer off Michael Tonkin that struck the facing on the upper deck in right-center. Back-to-back doubles off Louie Varland by Story and Abreu drove a couple more in the ninth.

That was more runs than even Gehrig — er, Lee — could overcome.

Lee entered the game in the third inning, after Correa doubled over at first base upon hitting a single, the migraine making him lightheaded. Batting with two outs and two runners on in the fifth inning, Lee lined a single up the middle to score Bader with the Twins’ first run.

“I’m always pumped to hit one righthanded. I never hit the ball out there in the game to left-center. So it was a first,” Lee said. “Yeah, it got out by quite a bit. It was my first one [at Target Field] righthanded, so that was pretty cool, too.”

In the ninth, after Jeffers, in his first game back from paternity leave, reached on an error, Lee victimized former teammate Jorge Alcala, pulling a 2-1 fastball across the middle of the plate toward the limestone facing in right field.

“I thought [Abreu] was going to catch it because he was backing up against the wall,” Lee said. “Then finally he turned around, and it was like, ‘Just get off the wall, please,’ and it was gone.”

Though it didn’t overcome Boston’s lead, it made Twins history. Lee is the sixth Twin ever to homer from both sides of the plate in the same game, joining Roy Smalley Jr., Chili Davis, Ryan Doumit, Kennys Vargas and Jorge Polanco.

Longtime Twins nemesis Lucas Giolito made his 13th career Target Field start, and though it was his first for a team other than the White Sox, he sure looked the same as ever. Giolito put Twins on base in four of the six innings he pitched but held them to 1-for-9 with runners in scoring position, four of them rally-killing strikeouts.