DETROIT -- It’s not going to be the easiest path forward with both Royce Lewis and Carlos Correa sidelined for the time being, but still, the Twins got starting pitching this weekend that was good enough to surge them back to .500 -- which would, at minimum, have established positive momentum ahead of a tough matchup in Baltimore.

That starting pitching has been strong enough since Correa’s injury to mitigate those absences -- but a reminder of the vacancies on the left side of the infield reared up in the Twins’ 4-3 loss to the Tigers on Sunday afternoon at Comerica Park, when two playable balls got through interim third baseman Kyle Farmer and shortstop Willi Castro to prime Detroit’s game-winning rally in the eighth inning.

While both Carson Kelly’s short-hop liner that caromed into the air off the heel of Castro’s glove and Mark Canha’s two-run double off Farmer’s glove into left field were ruled hits and not errors, the Twins felt they should have made both plays -- and that swung the outcome.

“I mean, we didn't get beat that game,” Farmer said. “We lost that game. Partially my fault, too. I'll take ownership of it.”

“It’s a very tough one to swallow for everyone, there’s no way around it,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “You had the game in hand, and you lose it. Probably the part that’s going to bother us -- and we can’t let it bother us for too long -- is that our bullpen has been so good and our infield defense has been good.”

A masterful Bailey Ober handed a 3-0 lead to his bullpen after six-plus scoreless innings, and the Twins had their high-leverage relief corps lined up to take it to the finish, highlighted by Caleb Thielbar’s return from the injured list.

But they didn’t make the plays behind their pitchers.

Not much could be done about Javier Báez’s homer off Thielbar with one out in the eighth, but the frame began to compound when Kelly hit a low line drive towards Castro, the interim shortstop, who tried to corral the ball on a short hop but saw it ricochet into the air for what was ruled a single.

“That was a really hard-hit ball,” Castro said. “It was coming like a knuckleball. Yeah, I tried to do my best, tried to handle it, and obviously, that happened. I think it was the cause of the game.”

Riley Greene then knocked a single up the middle that tracked barely out of the reach of a vastly improved Edouard Julien (95th percentile in Outs Above Average this season, per Statcast) -- and the crucial hit came when Canha chopped what might have been an inning-ending double play ball towards Farmer at the hot corner.

Farmer took a backhanded stab at another short hop to try for a quick double-play turn, but the ball went off his glove into left field to allow two runs to score, tying the game. Spencer Torkelson flared a single to bring home the go-ahead run, and the Twins didn’t have an answer in the ninth.

“I honestly thought I made the right read,” Farmer said. “Just took a higher bounce than I thought it was going to. Dirt was a little hard today. I thought I made the right read. If I went back and did it again, I'd probably stick with that read again. Just didn't go in my glove.”

It’s certainly not fair to anyone to speculate about whether Correa or Lewis would have made those plays at their everyday positions, but both Castro and Farmer had been shuttling all over the diamond defensively before settling into these interim starting roles, likely making it tougher to have internalized the instincts for those in-between plays.

For now, the four earned runs charged to Thielbar and Griffin Jax marked the first major blemish on what has otherwise been a tremendous start to the season for the bullpen, which had allowed nine earned runs all season and entered the game with an MLB-best 1.53 ERA.

Regardless, the Twins aren’t in position to make excuses. A chance to get back to .500 instead turned into the club’s sixth loss in nine games, despite three dominant six-inning starts in a row from Joe Ryan, Simeon Woods Richardson and Ober. Minnesota needs to execute in order to withstand the absences of its stars -- and Sunday was an example of what happens if it doesn’t.

“We have players to make those plays [who] make them every day,” Baldelli said. “And we didn’t execute.”