HEADLINE

Wily Peralta, Tigers can take road series vs. Twins

Field Level Media

July 28, 2021 at 6:58 am.

After rallying to snap an eight-game losing streak at Target Field with a 6-5 victory in 11 innings on Tuesday night, the Detroit Tigers will turn to right-hander Wily Peralta to try to win the rubber game of their three-game series with the Minnesota Twins on Wednesday afternoon in Minneapolis.

Peralta (3-2, 2.56 ERA) is 2-3 with a 4.28 ERA in 19 career games and five starts against Minnesota. But he blanked the Twins on four hits over seven innings in his last start against them, on July 18 in Detroit in a contest the Tigers won, 7-0. He is 1-0 with a 3.72 ERA in eight career games and three starts at Target Field.

Left-hander J.A. Happ (5-5, 6.14), who yielded 11 hits and seven runs over seven innings in that 7-0 loss on July 18, will once again oppose Peralta. Happ is 4-3 with a 5.22 ERA in 15 career appearances (14 starts) against the Tigers.

Detroit, which fell behind 4-0 on a first-inning grand slam by Mitch Garver and trailed 5-1 heading into the ninth on Tuesday, rallied to tie it on rookie catcher Eric Haase’s grand slam off reliever Hansel Robles and then pushed across the winning run in the 11th inning on an RBI single by Miguel Cabrera.

It snapped an overall eight-game road losing streak for the Tigers, who had dropped the series opener 6-5 in 10 innings on Monday night.

Haase, a former Michigan Gatorade Player of the Year in 2011 at Divine Child High School in Dearborn, became the first major league rookie to hit a game-tying grand slam in the ninth inning since Jim Pagliaroni of the Red Sox did it on June 18, 1961.

“The storybook season for the hometown kid continues,” joked Detroit manager AJ Hinch. “Really an uplifting swing for us. We were pretty beaten up a bit in this game and never really felt we were doing much to get back into it until the ninth.”

The opposite-field drive inside the right field foul pole was the 17th homer of the season in just 194 at-bats for Haase.

“It was awesome,” the former seventh-round pick of the Cleveland Indians said. “It couldn’t have come at a better time in the game for us.”

Cabrera then won it in the 11th when he bounced a one-out single into center to drive in designated runner Jonathan Schoop. It was his 2,936th career hit, moving him ahead of Barry Bonds into 37th place on the all-time hits list.

“We hung in there,” Hinch said. “We didn’t play our best game, but we found a way to scratch and claw. Got some big at-bats in the ninth. … Obviously, getting a win in this ballpark, which has been very difficult for us, is nice.”

It was quite a different feeling in the Twins’ locker room afterward.

“It doesn’t get much more difficult than that,” Minnesota manager Rocco Baldelli said. “The loss today, it stings a lot. The game is not really forgiving, and you have to go out there and earn it. And we have to play nine good innings to get a win.”

The Twins, who put closer Taylor Rogers on the 10-day injured list following Monday’s win with a strained left middle finger, had to take Robles out in the ninth due to heat-related illness and then had Garver leave in the 10th after he got hit squarely on the right hand with a 95 mph sinker thrown by Jose Cisnero. Baldelli said X-rays came back negative, and Garver will be considered day-to-day.