The Minnesota Twins suffered a 9-2 loss at the hands of the Detroit Tigers Friday night. Detroit had 18 hits to Minnesota’s seven.
“It was a bad night,” said manager Paul Molitor. “We didn’t hit enough to give ourselves a real chance.”
Starter Phil Hughes, who had pitched well despite his 1-3 record entering the game, gave up three runs in the third inning, and four overall on seven hits.
“Uncharacteristically he walked the leadoff man, and didn’t bode particularly well after that,” said Molitor. “They hit some balls hard. They’re a team that attacks, and he’s a strike-thrower. They just didn’t back off.
“He did a nice job of containing after the three-spot in the first, other than Cabrera’s home run. But I thought after five, that was enough, given the fact that he had to fight through those innings.”
The bullpen didn’t fare much better. Casey Fien gave up three earned runs on four hits in 1.1 innings of relief, and Alex Meyer gave up two earned runs on five hits.
“Casey gave us a good inning there in the second inning out, a couple home runs, and we had to try to find a way to finish the game,” said Molitor.
“We talked about getting Alex in the game, and it didn’t go very well for him. I don’t know if it was some jitters or coming in in the middle of an inning. But he had trouble commanding his pitches.”
The offense continues to run through Joe Mauer, Miguel Sano and Danny Santana.
Mauer singled in the first and extended his on-base streak to 23 games to start the year, the longest streak in baseball, and matched Tom Brunansky and Chuck Knoblauch for the third longest on-base streak to start a season in Twins history.
Sano has an RBI in five straight games; Santana is hitting .471 in four games since coming off the disabled list. Sano also made an incredible diving catch in right field.
“I’m not sure what the Richter Scale showed on that one, but it was probably the best play he’s made here in the last month,” said Molitor. “I just tried to remind him that you can have fun playing the outfield too.”
Michael Fulmer went 5.0 innings, gave up seven hits, but only two earned runs in his debut.
“He was good. He came out, his fastball was alive, and we had a little trouble getting hits off of that particular pitch,” said Molitor. “We mixed in some singles, but we couldn’t finish off an inning.
“Slider was effective at times. He didn’t throw a lot of changeups, but he mixed a couple of them in. But mostly it was just his velocity and movement that was giving us trouble.”
There was a mishap in the outfield tonight, and while it ultimately didn’t matter when it comes to the outcome of the game, it added insult to injury in an already tough game.
Neither Santana nor Oswaldo Arcia were given an error on the play, and Molitor had not figured out which player was at fault or what exactly happened when we entered his office after the game.
“I haven’t really got the scoop on that out of them,” said Molitor.
“I think that Danny probably thought he had a little better angle to make the throw as a center fielder, and then I think he must’ve peripherally saw that Arcia was kinda in the path of where he wanted to go, and he backed off and the ball fell.
“When you’re having a bad night, that just kinda punctuates it.”
