Minnesota Twins end three-game skid, top Detroit Tigers 5-1 to take series finale

The car enveloped in flames atop the parking ramp just beyond Target Field’s right-field scoreboard Sunday is a useful analogy for what the Twins believe was happening to their season down on the field.

Stop. Don’t say tire fire.

No, the Twins prefer the phoenix-rising-from-the-ashes metaphor. Or perhaps torching all the gloom and frustration that’s surrounded them for two weeks. Either way, salvaging the finale of the weekend series against the Tigers with a 5-1 victory Sunday struck plenty of Twins as a good opportunity to get hot.

“That’s a very good version of our club. That’s what our club looks like. This is the way we play,” manager Rocco Baldelli insisted after the Twins broke their three-game losing streak, improved to 5-11 and avoided the worst 16-game start in the team’s history. “That’s a game I’ve seen many times from this group, and that’s the game we’re looking for. We want to play a whole lot of games like that.”

A game that includes offensive contributions from each of the top five hitters in the batting order, he means, and a solid, trouble-containing five-inning start on the mound. A bullpen that retires 12 of the 13 hitters it faces, and twice strikes out the side. A defense that not only didn’t commit an error or allow an unearned run but contributed a running catch and a diving catch to keep Detroit bottled up.

“It was just a team thing, everybody picking each other up,” said Byron Buxton, who homered in the first inning and doubled and scored in the sixth. “We’ve been not having the season that we want to, so a big part of us getting back is making sure that we’ve got each other’s back.”

Buxton was batting second in the Twins’ batting order for the first time this season, just behind Edouard Julien, leading off for the first time, too. Each of them homered, and third-place hitter Willi Castro singled twice, extending his streak of reaching base to all 15 games he has played this year.

“Buck started us off hot, getting that first home run and giving me that lead,” Simeon Woods Richardson said after earning his first victory of the year, and handing Tigers righthander Casey Mize his first loss. “I just had to go make pitches, that was the biggest thing.”

He did, overcoming a sizable weakness that he showed in his two previous starts: lefthanded hitters. Woods Richardson had given up eight hits and two walks in 18 plate appearances by lefthanders this year, and now was facing a Tigers lineup stacked with five lefties.

Woods Richardson said he wasn’t even aware of the numbers. “I’m not even thinking about it. I’m thinking pitch by pitch,” he said, a strategy that certainly worked in the three most dangerous moments of his outing — all of them against Tigers third-place hitter Riley Greene, one of those lefthanders.

With Kerry Carpenter on second base in the first inning, Woods Richardson snuck a slider on the inside corner past Greene for strike three. With Trey Sweeney on third and Carpenter on first in the third inning, Woods blew a 95-mph fastball by Greene, ending the threat. And with Gleyber Torres on second and Carpenter on first in the fifth, Greene lofted a changeup to right field, where Wallner could reach it on the run.

BOXSCORE: Twins 5, Detroit 1

“It’s huge,” Woods Richardson said of forcing Greene to strand five runners. “That was a big part of the game, putting a stopping point to” Detroit rallies.

He wasn’t even fazed by the smoke wafting all over the ballpark from the blaze behind right field.

“I saw it get smoky. You could smell it on the field,” Woods Richardson said. “When it got smoky, I was just like, ‘OK, just take deeper breaths. Try to breathe a little better.’ ”