Twins 6, Tigers 0: Matt Boyd leaves injured, Tigers left bruised in loss

Matthew Boyd left Tuesday’s game with a left oblique spasm. Any chance of a Detroit Tigers victory left with him, as the Twins took a 6-0 victory over Detroit.

The first four innings of this game were, for the most part, uneventful. For a second straight night, Nicholas Castellanos tried to jumpstart the Tigers offense in the first inning, but Victor Martinez instantly dashed any hopes of a rally by grounding into a double play. In the second inning, James McCann tried to start a two-out rally with a single, followed by a double by JaCoby Jones, but with men on second and third, Twins starter Lance Lynn wiggled out of the jam, causing Jose Iglesias to fly out on a first-pitch cutter on the edge of the strike zone. Meanwhile, Boyd was rock-solid early on, as he cruised through four innings allowing only one hit and two walks.

In the bottom of the fifth inning, the wheels fell off for Detroit. Boyd walked Mitch Garver and Logan Morrison to start the inning on a total of 10 pitches (one strike to each player), and was subsequently removed from the game with an injury. The severity of Boyd’s injury is yet to be determined.

Warwick Saupold replaced Boyd and was able to make Max Kepler pop out to third baseman Niko Goodrum, but then the Twins piled on three runs via an Ehire Adrianza double and a Brian Dozier double. Buck Farmer entered the game in the sixth and pitched a 1-2-3 inning, but when he returned for the seventh inning, chaos ensued. He started the seventh by striking out Morrison, but then allowed four consecutive hits to the Twins: a Kepler double, a second Adrianza double (this one a ground-rule double), a Byron Buxton single, and a second Dozier double. By the time the inning was over, the Twins had added three runs to take a 6-0 lead. Thankfully, Daniel Stumpf, who entered today with a WHIP of 2.04, threw a 1-2-3 inning of his own (the first two outs were very loud outs to center field, but they were outs).

Victor Martinez had a particularly miserable game today as the Tigers were shut out for the eighth time in 48 games. He grounded into two double plays before the Twins ran away with the lead (and would have grounded into a third had there not already been two outs in the third inning). He did lace a loud single in the seventh inning, but Martinez is down to a miserable .234 batting average while batting in the three-hole for the Tigers. Miguel Cabrera’s return cannot come soon enough. Castellanos, meanwhile, knocked two hits for his third straight game. He is up to a .320 batting average.

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