Twins 6, Tigers 3: Santiago, Rosario halt skid at 4

For a good portion of the night, it looked like the Twins’ week-long frustration over wasting decent starts on a scuffling offense would continue.

But that didn’t happen!

Minnesota exploded for six runs in the 6th, chasing a clearly tired Justin Verlander and icing the cake with a majestic Eddie Rosario dong on their way to a 6-3 victory. The win halts the Twins’ 4-game losing streak and gets them back to .500.

One of the major storylines of the season so far is the surprising competence of Hector Santiago. The New Little Einsteins’ decision to re-sign Santiago was met with...skepticism, to put it mildly. And yet, in this small sample-size world, he’s been far and away the 2nd-best Minnesota starting pitcher.

That continued on Friday night, as he pitched 6.1 solid innings of baseball, allowing 3 runs on 7 hits. A Victor Martinez single and a Justin Upton double staked the Tigers to an early lead, and an enormous James McCann dong in the sixth put Detroit up 3-0.

Fortunately, the sixth is when the Twins finally got to Verlander. After threatening and not scoring in the third, Minnesota at least managed to make Kate Upton’s lesser half throw a fuckload of pitches. Verlander proceeded to walk the first three batters of the inning, then surrendered a seeing-eye, 2-run single to Robbie Grossman before getting pulled.

That’s when the Detroit bullpen got to work setting fire to the whole goddamn edifice. A bloop single from Jorge Polanco knotted the game, then the long-thought-dormant Eddie Rosario stroked a massive 3-run dong off Joe Jimenez to give the Twins their first lead of the game.

After Santiago’s last out, the Twins bullpen stepped up, with Ryan Pressley, Taylor Rogers, and Brandon Kintzler shutting the door. Slump is busted.

STUDS: Santiago, Rosario.

DUDS: Jimenez

ROBOT ROLL CALL:

Enjoy your weekend, everybody.