Tuesday’s win was an exciting show of what the Twins’ trio of stars can do when they’re all healthy.
Royce Lewis snapped out of an 0-for-10 skid with a double off Detroit ace Tarik Skubal, bringing home a pair of runs. Byron Buxton doubled and then used his speed to score the go-ahead run. And Carlos Correa added an insurance home run in the Twins’ 5-3 win over the Tigers at Target Field.
But this trio has so rarely been healthy at the same time, and in the midst of all that, the injury bug returned. Again, it was for Lewis, who has been dynamic since his returning to the field in early June after straining his quadriceps in the first game of the season.
Lewis left early with left groin tightness and said he would have more information after the Twins receive magnetic resonance imaging results.
“This is out of my control. I have no idea,” Lewis said when asked if he was optimistic if the injury was minor. “But probably not very optimistic, to be honest with you. I’m praying, but it’s usually always horrible knows. So we’ll see.”
Lewis said he felt the tightness crop up when he was making his way to second base. And though he played two more innings in the field, he exited in the sixth inning.
The lead that Lewis gave them held until the fifth inning, when starter Simeon Woods Richardson gave up a pair of home runs, yielding three runs. Those would be the only three he’d give up in his 5 2/3-inning outing.
“Two pitches happened but that’s baseball,” Woods Richardson said. “ … I’m glad that (manager) Rocco (Baldelli) let me go back out there, showing faith, showing trust, showing belief.”
Just a half inning later, Manuel Margot tied the game with a home run to the bullpen in center field, extending the Twins’ (48-37) home run streak to a club-record 20 straight games.
And in the seventh, Buxton, who earlier in the day flashed the leather by stretching out for a diving catch, showed off some of the rest of his skill set in the seventh, hitting a double, racing to third on a wild pitch and sprinting home and diving in safely headfirst on a ball hit back to Tigers (38-47) second baseman Colt Keith.
A clearly-amped Buxton let out a yell and patted his chest after scoring the run to give the Twins the lead for good.
“He’s feeling good and you can really see it,” Baldelli said. “We’re seeing it right now. He’s very explosive and playing the game the way he knows how to play it.”
The very next inning, Correa provided some comfort for the Twins, sending a shot out to left-center on a first-pitch slider from reliever Beau Brieske.
The win moves the Twins to a season-high 11 games over .500.
“We had good at-bats. We did our best to avoid expanding,” Baldelli said. And it’s good to come back after an off day and keep it going, keep the momentum going in the direction we want.”
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