Thanks to the Friday heroics of rookie Wenceel Perez, the Detroit Tigers will look for back-to-back wins over the Minnesota Twins when the teams meet Saturday afternoon in Minneapolis.
Detroit earned a 5-4 victory against the Twins in the series opener when Perez drove in the tiebreaking run with a ninth-inning single up the middle.
Perez, 24, finished the game with two RBIs — the first two of his big-league career.
Meanwhile, Minnesota will try to stop a five-game losing streak. It has been a turbulent start for the Twins, who have lost 12 of their first 18 games.
“We’ve had plenty of hard games so far in a short period of time here,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said after his team’s latest loss. “We had plenty of opportunities to get stuff going and close out innings and play cleaner baseball.
“I sit there toward the end of the game and I’m like, there’s a lot of things I can look at — and I think anyone watching the game can look at — that we can just do better and put ourselves in a position to win.”
Tigers right-hander Reese Olson (0-2, 3.86 ERA) will make his fourth start of the season on Saturday. The 24-year-old went 5-7 with a 3.99 ERA in 21 games (18 starts) as a rookie for Detroit last season.
Olson took a tough-luck loss in his most recent outing. He limited the Texas Rangers to one run on six hits in 6 1/3 innings on Monday, and he walked just one while striking out eight. The Tigers, however, managed just five hits and lost 1-0.
“We just didn’t get the big hit,” Tigers manager A.J. Hinch said after that game. “Our pitchers were sensational, but the big hit is key in a one-run game.”
In three career starts against Minnesota, all of them last season, Olson is 2-0 with a 3.21 ERA.
Twins right-hander Bailey Ober (0-1, 6.57 ERA) also will look for his first win of the 2024 campaign. The 6-foot-9, 260-pound hurler has struggled after a strong 2023 season in which he went 8-6 with a 3.43 ERA in 26 starts for Minnesota.
Ober recorded his first quality start of the season in his most recent outing, which came in Detroit on Sunday. He pitched six scoreless innings, allowing three hits, walking none and striking out three.
The 28-year-old has made eight career starts against Detroit. He is 1-2 with a 4.61 ERA in those games, with nine walks and 42 strikeouts in 41 innings.
The Tigers could be without veteran third baseman Gio Urshela, who left the Friday game because of right hamstring tightness after grounding out in the second inning.
After the game, Hinch said of Urshela, “It didn’t look good. I thought he was running a little funny down to first, and then when he got to first and then bent over, I had a little pit in my stomach. He’s going to get evaluated. I’m never really optimistic on those type of injuries with his hammy.”
Urshela is hitting .298 (17-for-57) with two doubles and six RBIs through 18 games in his first season with the Tigers. He also has played for five other teams, including the Twins, with whom he hit .285 with 13 homers and 64 RBIs in 144 games in 2022.
