Rocco Baldelli ejected, Twins waste away lead in 11-inning loss to Detroit Tigers

Twins manager Rocco Baldelli, ejected in the 11th inning Thursday, kicked dirt over home plate and flung his cap across the field.

Baldelli was irate with home-plate umpire John Bacon. In a 4-3 loss to the Detroit Tigers at Target Field, Ryan Jeffers led off the bottom of the 11th inning with the tying run at second base. Jeffers tipped a two-strike pitch from Tigers reliever Rafael Montero, and the ball was smothered by catcher Dillon Dingler.

Bacon called it a strikeout. Jeffers and Baldelli asked Bacon to check the ball for a dirt smudge, but Bacon refused.

Montero retired the next two batters and the Twins were handed a loss after scoring three runs off Tarik Skubal, arguably the best pitcher in baseball, on the same day their team plane returned from a road trip at 3:15 a.m.

“The only way you can get the best idea of whether that ball was fouled off or not is to just look at the ball. And he wouldn’t look at it,” Baldelli said. “I have a lot of respect for John. I don’t know why he just wouldn’t look at it.”

Even after watching replays of the foul tip, it was impossible to tell with dirt kicking up from Dingler’s catching mitt, Baldelli said. Jeffers, the Twins’ catcher, says home-plate umpires regularly ask him to show the ball on foul tips.

Detroit’s dugout, Jeffers said, “was yelling at Montero to throw the ball out. There were guys, ‘Throw it out! Throw it out!’ So, they can’t look at it because that’s what they’ll do.”

The Twins didn’t score over their final eight innings, including the last two when there was an automatic runner at second base. They had only one hit after the fourth inning, a two-out double from Brooks Lee in the ninth.

With the score tied in the 10th inning, Mickey Gasper dropped a successful sacrifice bunt to advance automatic runner Alan Roden to third. Austin Martin, the next batter, twice looked to drop a squeeze bunt, one that was fouled, before he chopped a ground ball to first base. With the infield drawn in, Roden was thrown out at the plate and aggravated a thumb injury from earlier this week.

“If we lay down a nice, good bunt, I think the game is won,” said Baldelli, who called for the squeeze bunts.

In the top of the 11th inning, Erasmo Ramírez threw a wild pitch to advance the extra-innings automatic runner to third. Gleyber Torres followed with a sacrifice fly to right field, scoring the go-ahead run.

Anytime Skubal is listed as the opposing pitcher, the Twins must figure it’ll be a low-scoring game. Skubal, entering Thursday, allowed five runs over his last four starts against the Twins.

Edouard Julien, a career .170 batter against lefthanded pitchers, bashed a high 95-mph sinker onto the concourse in right field for a solo homer. Skubal didn’t even bother turning his head to watch the ball as it sailed over all six rows of seats and the standing-room only area behind them.

It was the first homer Skubal, the reigning American League Cy Young Award winner, allowed to a lefty batter all year.

Just as stunning as Julien’s 410-foot homer, his second career homer against a lefty pitcher, the Twins kept at it. Austin Martin laced a double to left field, and Byron Buxton followed with a single through the left side of the infield.

With runners on the corners and one out, Ryan Jeffers drove in a run on a groundout. Then Luke Keaschall poked a two-out RBI single over the head of shortstop Trey Sweeney. In total, it was a three-run, four-hit third inning off Skubal.

From there, Skubal looked like, well, Skubal. Julien hit a two-out single in the fourth inning, but Skubal retired 13 of his last 14 batters. He received a standing ovation from Tigers fans in the announced crowd of 24,123 after he finished the seventh inning.

The Twins couldn’t make their three-run lead stand. Kerry Carpenter hit a two-out double in the fourth inning, Detroit’s first hit off Twins starter Bailey Ober, and Riley Greene followed two pitches later with a two-run homer on an elevated 89-mph fastball.

Ober saw his velocity dip after the third inning. In his first time through the Tigers lineup, he didn’t allow a ball out of the infield and he struck out four of his first nine batters.

“My energy was just zapped,” said Ober, who was supposed to fly home ahead of the team Wednesday, but his flight was canceled because of storms in New York. He went to sleep at 4:30 a.m. “That’s what I’m most frustrated about is I just wasn’t able to maintain how I was feeling from the first three innings into the next three innings.”

The Tigers tied the game in the sixth. Javier Báez dropped a leadoff double down the right-field line, and Colt Keith, the next batter, followed with an RBI single to center. Ober permitted four hits and zero walks in 5⅓ innings, and three of them scored.