Twins thump Tigers, 9-3, behind four home runs, strong outing from Pablo López

DETROIT — The Twins found a new use for those non-team-colors City Connect uniforms on Friday: Decoy.

And they weren't even wearing theirs.

Willi Castro cracked a two-run single to left field in the fourth inning, and advanced to third base when Tigers second baseman Colt Keith received the throw, whirled and saw Castro several feet beyond the bag, with a dark-uniformed participant standing next to the base. Keith threw in hopes of catching Castro in a rundown — except that the person he was throwing to was first-base umpire Mike Muchlinski, not a dark-blue-clad Tigers first baseman Bligh Madras.

The ball sailed untouched into the Twins' dugout, Byron Buxton drove Castro in moments later, and the Twins raced to a 9-3 victory over the "Motor City" Tigers, as their City Connect jerseys read, at Comerica Park.

The strange mistaken-identity play was the critical one in a three-run fourth inning off Tigers starter Keider Montero, but the Twins generated plenty of other offense, too, mostly by launching pitches into the crowd.

Buxton and Trevor Larnach went back-to-back in the first inning, Matt Wallner connected in the second, and Christian Vázquez hit a two-run shot in the sixth.

All that power staked Pablo López to a six-run lead, but for a few tense moments in the seventh inning, the right-hander appeared in danger of squandering it.

A bloop double to leadoff the inning had escalated into a bases-loaded, no-outs emergency with López's pitch count nearing 90, and the Twins' biggest lead in a couple of weeks was in jeopardy. Time to call for a rescuer out of the bullpen, right?

Not this time. Not with this Pablo.

Manager Rocco Baldelli let the Twins right-hander face his own challenge, and he responded with two ground balls and a popup, preserving the Twins' third victory in their last four games.

López did give up two runs, both of them scoring on shortstop Javier Báez's third homer of the year. But no other Tigers player reached second base until that seventh-inning jam.

López has been "using his four-seamer [fastball] and his sinker really well, going back and forth between them. You're seeing a lot of that in baseball now, the use of more than one fastball. You're seeing the benefits of it," Baldelli said before the game. "You can't take the same swing and hit Pablo's sinker and his four-seamer with the same swing. You can't do it. He's always trying to figure things out. He's always learning and mixing in new things."

So is Vázquez, apparently, judging by his first three-hit game since April 28. The catcher singled to left in the second inning, singled to right in the fourth — and then stole second base, his third of the season and first since April 29. He capped it off with the sixth-inning home run, though he had a chance to drive in even more runs when he batted with the bases loaded in the ninth. But he struck out, ending the inning.

The game also included an unusual incident that didn't involve the players: As the Tigers prepared to bat in the eighth inning, two children, perhaps 9-12 years old, jumped onto the field. Security guards chased them across the outfield and finally apprehended them near the left-field corner, handcuffing them before escorting them off the field.