Twins rally for third straight win over Tigers, 9-4

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Jorge Polanco hit a go-ahead three-run homer in the seventh inning and the Minnesota Twins rallied from a four-run deficit to beat the Detroit Tigers 9-4 Saturday.

Alex Kirilloff also homered for Minnesota to put the Twins on the board in the sixth. Luis Arraez drove in two insurance runs with an eighth-inning single.

“We play hard," Arraez said. "That’s why we won the game today."

The Twins have won the first three games of the series against the Tigers, with one remaining before the All-Star break.

For the second straight day, it took until the sixth inning for Minnesota to get on the scoreboard against Detroit. The Twins had a four-run sixth on Friday, then on Saturday they scored two in the sixth, three in the seventh and four in the eighth.

“It’s a beautiful thing when you stay at it and you continue to have the at-bats you’re looking for and you put some runs across the board,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. “There’s different ways to do it. Today, we went deep and brought some runs in and made it happen.”

After Andrelton Simmons snapped an 0-for-19 slump with a base hit and Arraez followed with a single, Polanco took reliever Joe Jimenez (2-1) deep to right to give Minnesota a 5-4 lead in the seventh.

Detroit threatened in the eighth with the tying run on third and one out, but Twins reliever Alex Colomé struck out Eric Haase and Jeimer Candelario to escape the jam.

“That would have changed the game more than necessarily even the Jimenez homer,” Tigers manager A.J. Hinch said of the eighth inning. “The back half of this game was a mess. We didn’t do a lot right.”

Kyle Funkhouser started Saturday’s bullpen game for the Tigers. Funkhouser gave up just two first-inning singles in 2 1/3 innings of work. Detroit used seven total pitchers...

source https://www.chron.com/sports/article/Twins-rally-for-third-straight-win-over-Tigers-16306424.php