Fly ball falls in as Twins lose on G2 walk-off

DETROIT -- For the briefest of moments on Saturday evening, it looked as though the Twins had turned it around. After being shut out in Game 1 of the split doubleheader, Minnesota had taken the lead in extra innings at Comerica Park thanks to the heads-up wheels on pinch-runner Nick Gordon.

But it wasn’t meant to be. The Tigers tied the game in the bottom of the same frame, then delivered the knockout blow on a shallow hit to center from Miguel Cabrera. Twins shortstop Andrelton Simmons and Gordon, the center fielder, converged on the ball but it fell between them, leaving Jonathan Schoop to sprint home from first base with the winning run in Detroit’s 5-4, eight-inning victory.

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“It’s obviously a hard way to lose a ballgame; a game that we played pretty hard in,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “It’s a tough time to be in the field and have to go get some kinds of fly balls. Obviously, Nick lost that one in the sky.”

The play was definitely Gordon’s to make as Simmons was sprinting backward on a diagonal, but neither called off the other and both shied away at the last minute. Simmons -- who’d slid to his left to avoid a potential collision -- rolled to his back and threw up his hands in an I-don’t-know-either gesture, frustration painted across his face.

By the time Gordon scooped up the ball and fired to the plate, Schoop had rounded third. Gordon’s throw was up the line, allowing the Tigers’ first baseman to cross home easily and Detroit to sweep the twin bill.

“Honestly, that can happen to anybody,” Baldelli said. “It’s also an especially challenging position when you have a guy like Nick who hasn’t played a ton in center field, which also means he hasn’t played at this time of day in center field. And it’s not an easy task. It’s obviously a play that has to be made for us to win the ballgame.”

Minnesota’s pitching was strong throughout the day, but the Twins mustered just two singles in the first tilt due to what Baldelli labeled “rusty-ish” at-bats after the extended layoff during All-Star Week.

“You can hit BP and play catch all you want,” Baldelli said following Game 1, “but once you get out there to see Major League pitching, it's obviously a little bit of a different story.”

The difference in offense between Saturday’s contests was drastic: Game 1 featured just one run, a homer from Detroit’s leadoff hitter in the first inning; Game 2 was a tug of war from beginning to end. Nelson Cruz doubled for the first hit in Game 2 and scored on the next play, a single from Josh Donaldson, to give Minnesota a quick lead in the first inning.

When a bases-clearing triple from Akil Baddoo in the bottom of second handed Detroit a 3-1 lead, Donaldson quickly stole back the momentum with a 413-foot homer, his 14th of the year, to lead off the fourth.

Cruz continued his assault on Comerica Park in the fifth inning. With the bases loaded and one out in the fifth, Cruz shied away from a trio of pitches and fouled off another before he found what he was looking for: a 91 mph slider that he tapped up the middle and just far enough behind second base to push across the tying run.

After an 0-for-3 showing in Game 1, Cruz’s 2-for-3 performance in the nightcap left his average in Detroit at .331, a number that includes 11 doubles, 20 home runs and 52 RBIs in 63 career games. Similarly, the Twins gained steam at Comerica Park as the day wore on.

Kenta Maeda fanned eight during his five frames and limited Detroit to three hits in the nightcap, and Hansel Robles followed with two scoreless innings to send the game to extras. As the last out of the seventh inning, Trevor Larnach began the eighth on second base, where he was replaced by Gordon, the pinch-runner.

A flyout moved Gordon to third, and he barreled home with the go-ahead run on a wild pitch from Joe Jiménez. From there, all signs pointed toward a Twins victory … until Cabrera’s two-out knock dropped out of the shadows and onto the outfield grass.

“We are challenging our guys and we are sending them out there in unfamiliar spots and seeing what they can do,” Baldelli said. “And this is going to happen. It’s not something you ever want to deal with or you want to see, but when it does happen, you understand why it happened.”