Maeda (5 scoreless IP): 'I'm back. ... I think I can excel from here'

DETROIT -- The bullpen door in left field was already open, and left-handed reliever Jovani Moran was several steps onto the warning track, ready to make the jog to the mound with two outs in the fifth inning.

Three hundred feet away, Kenta Maeda had no intentions to cede the mound amid a jam with two runners on base. He doesn’t like to push back, but he was fully convicted as he insisted to bench coach Jayce Tingler: “I got him. I got him. I got him.”

A confused Moran made a U-turn, and four pitches later, Maeda’s splitter dove underneath the bat of Zach McKinstry for the third out, ending the veteran’s return to the big league mound on his own terms. Maeda picked up his first win since undergoing Tommy John surgery by completing five scoreless innings to prime Minnesota’s 4-1 win over the Tigers on Friday at Comerica Park, the Twins' third consecutive victory to push them back over .500.

"I'm just genuinely happy to get that first W,” Maeda said through interpreter Dai Sekizaki. “It really has a significant meaning. If anything, like mentally, I think I'm back as the Kenta Maeda that everyone knows. I think I can excel from here.”

That final out -- after which he screamed into the air twice -- marked Maeda’s eighth strikeout of the evening, capping an 83-pitch outing during which he only allowed three singles and two walks, with his fastball velocity back up to a 90.4 mph average and his slider and splitter diving away from bats. It marked his first win and his first scoreless appearance since Aug. 14, 2021.

In the 22 1/2 months since then, his return to the Majors following Tommy John surgery had been anything but seamless. Barely two weeks into what he hoped would be a normal 2023 season, the Twins pushed Maeda’s third start back a few days to deal with lingering fatigue in his throwing arm. In that next start, he took a 111.6 mph comebacker to the ankle, cutting the outing short.

He miraculously didn’t need any extra time off due to that incident -- but after he allowed 10 runs to the Yankees in three innings on April 26, the Twins diagnosed him with a right triceps strain, causing him to miss 51 more games while the Minnesota rotation continued to thrive in his absence.

All that made this win all the more significant.

“I think this win put a lot of weight off my shoulders,” Maeda said.

While Maeda had exhibited outward confidence as he completed his rehab stint with Triple-A St. Paul, he also acknowledged after his Friday performance that he experienced nerves in the first inning, when the first two Detroit hitters reached base via a walk and a single. He still wasn’t sure at that point if he was, indeed, fully back.

“I had -- not doubts, but uncertainty, of whether I was going to be able to pitch well, pitch healthy, things like that,” Maeda said.

So, when he got Javier Báez to ground into an inning-ending 6-4-3 double play, that finally set the tone for him -- yes, he could still do this; yes, he’s still Kenta Maeda. It helped that the Twins’ offense immediately got him some run support with homers from Royce Lewis and Max Kepler, staking him to an early 3-0 lead.

“He’s truly a seasoned, very intelligent pitcher who has a lot of different ways to get the outs that he needs, to get through an inning,” said manager Rocco Baldelli, who was ejected in the second inning for arguing for a balk call he thought should have been made against Detroit starter Joey Wentz. “I thought the command was solid today. I thought everything we hoped for, and we were looking for -- especially for a first outing back -- we got.”

Maeda returned to the mound to strike out five of the next seven Detroit hitters, and he cruised through the middle innings, with his fastball velocity sustaining in the 90-91 mph range, until he ran into that fifth-inning jam created by a Miguel Cabrera single and a Jake Rogers walk.

Usually, when the Twins’ decision-maker goes to the mound, the decision has already been made. That was not the case on Friday, because Maeda had showed everyone -- Baldelli, Tingler, even himself -- enough to believe he could get that final out.

And he did.

“We’ve got a lot of trust,” said Tingler, who served as acting manager following Baldelli’s ejection. “He’s gotten a lot of outs in this league.”