Brooks Lee’s grand slam off Chris Paddack helps Twins end skid, beat Tigers 8-1

Chris Paddack has invited his close friend Brooks Lee to Texas this coming winter so they can do more fishing, as they often did here in Minnesota.

“He really wants me to go,” Lee said after the Twins’ 8-1 rout of the Detroit Tigers on Sunday at Target Field. “But maybe not so much right now.”

That’s because Lee turned on a letter-high fastball from his fishing buddy in the third inning and drove it into the right-field seats, a grand slam that helped stop the Twins’ three-game losing streak.

“I just knew we didn’t want to get swept today,” Lee said.

If the Twins had been swept, the Tigers would have made some division-foe history: Detroit last swept a four-game series from the Twins in 1983 and had never, in the series’ 65-season history, done so in Minnesota.

Still haven’t thanks to the Twins’ rude welcome home to Paddack, whose four-season tenure at Target Field ended three days before the trade deadline last month. The righthander, who has already made two starts against his former teammates and now lost both, tied his season high by allowing three home runs.

Royce Lewis smacked a two-out solo shot to left field in the second inning, Byron Buxton bashed a first-pitch upper-deck shot to lead off the third, and Lee capped the six-run third inning by becoming the first Twin since July 5, 2024, to hit a home run with the bases loaded.

Lewis said the Twins might have had an advantage against Paddack, but not because they shared a clubhouse for so long with him.

“The real advantage was scheduling — we faced him a couple weeks ago,” Lewis said of the Twins’ 6-3 victory Aug. 5 in Detroit. “If I know I’m going to face a guy again real soon, I try to take a bunch of pitches in my first at-bat, to see all his pitches. I want to see every pitch he has.”

Armed with that firsthand scouting, Lewis lined a 2-0 sinker into the left-field seats in the second inning, his first home run since July 23, 76 at-bats ago.

Then the Twins knocked their former teammate around with the six-run third and added another run in the fourth, when a double-play relay from second baseman Zach McKinstry was wide of first base, allowing Buxton — who singled twice in addition to his homer — to score.

“It stings a little bit more when it’s your former team. I’m wishing those guys the best, but glad I don’t have to face them again,” Paddack said. “I know Brooks is going to send me a text in the next 15 minutes. You’ve got to have a little fun with it.”

“I looked right at him and started laughing,” Lee said. “It was one-nothing me, so I was like, whatever. He got me, too.”

All nine Twins in the batting order either reached base or drove in a run.

“It was a great team day out there, great win,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said, noting that it was Twins Hall of Fame day. “You get a lot of former Twins greats in the house and people are excited, and to go out there and have such a good day where everyone is contributing” meant a lot.

BOXSCORE: Twins 8, Detroit 1

MLB standings

The journeyman righthander, picked up off the waiver wire in the wake of the Paddack trade, was far more efficient than his predecessor, helping the Twins limit the Tigers to fewer than three runs for just the third time in 13 meetings this year. Hatch, facing Detroit for only the second time in his career, gave up just three hits over five innings, striking out four.

“First inning went really well, then I ran into some traffic and was able to work well around it. Then I settled in quite nicely,” Hatch (2-0) said. “Just wasn’t landing my off-speed [pitches] at first, then made a good adjustment and it opened things up for me.”

Colt Keith’s double in the third inning turned into a run when Kerry Carpenter followed with a line-drive single to right. But Hatch escaped that jam with no further damage, and Twins relievers Michael Tonkin, Cole Sands, newcomer Génesis Cabrera and Erasmo Ramírez didn’t allow so much as a baserunner in the final four innings, combining to strike out eight of the 12 hitters they faced.

All that’s left is to see whether Lee is still invited to Texas.