Carlos Correa injured as Twins fall to Tigers

DETROIT – Turns out, a completely neutralized offense, inning after inning of little but strikeouts and weakly hit balls, isn't the worst thing that can happen to the Twins.

Just ask Carlos Correa.

The Twins' shortstop apparently injured a muscle on his side while checking his swing, the low point on a night when Pablo López lasted only four rough innings and his teammates' most effective offensive ploy was hitting ground balls at Javier Báez.

Correa is likely headed to the injured list, and as a farewell, the Twins were manhandled by Tarik Skubal and three Tigers relievers 8-2 at Comerica Park on Friday night.

The Twins have now failed to score more than three runs in six consecutive games, going 1-5 in them, and this time, they never managed to advance a runner to third base until they trailed by seven runs. Manuel Margot reached third in the eighth, thanks to a bloop single, a wild pitch and fielder's indifference, and the Twins scored a pair of meaningless run in the ninth on doubles by Ryan Jeffers and Kyle Farmer and a single by Edouard Julien.

The Twins' other two hits were only that by dint of official scoring, since both were fielded by Baez, the Tigers' shortstop, but then not turned into outs.

Baez caught Edouard Julien's two-out grounder toward the hole in the third inning, but he dropped the ball as he dug it out of his glove. Baez fielded Jose Miranda's fourth-inning two-out grounder cleanly, but Spencer Torkelson caught his throw amid some awkward footwork, and umpire CB Bucknor ruled he was not touching the base before Miranda arrived.

Both plays were ruled hits — it was Baez's first two-hit game of the season, in a sense — and each was followed by a walk. But both times, Skubal quickly ended the threat.

López, though, had no such luck handling the Tigers on a windy night. Mark Canha clobbered a high-and-inside sinker into the Twins' bullpen in the first inning, and might have allowed more if Byron Buxton hadn't thrown Kerry Carpenter out at third base on a two-out single. A walk and a single turned into a fourth-inning run when Willi Castro's throw pulled Carlos Santana off first base, an error that allowed Torkelson to score.

And López didn't record an out in the fifth inning, with a pair of walks, Riley Greene's double and Torkelson's broken-base single chasing him after 93 pitches. Kody Funderburk relieved López and struck out three consecutive Tigers, but not before Carpenter blooped a single into right field, scoring a fifth run charged to López.

Michael Tonkin's first outing as a Twin since September 2017 resulted in a pair of runs for Detroit, and Jay Jackson surrendered an eighth before manager Rocco Baldelli, mindful that the Twins must play a doubleheader about 15 hours later, summoned Willi Castro to pitch in the eighth inning.

But none of the scoreboard ugliness hurt as much as losing another pillar of the team's lineup and defense. Correa seemed to flinch as he checked his swing during his third-run at-bat, an innocuous play with substantial effects. Once Skubal finished him off with a called third strike, the Twins' highest-paid player clutched his side as he walked toward the dugout. Baldelli met him at the top of the steps, and immediately replaced him with Castro.

If Correa is indeed out awhile, the Twins will have lost two middle-of-the-order infielders to oddly coincidental circumstances. Royce Lewis was also injured in the third inning of the first game of a road trip, while doing something he's done hundreds of times — in Lewis' case, simply running the bases, which resulted in a strained quadriceps.

The Twins have no obvious replacement for Correa on their 40-man roster, especially with Lewis expected to miss another month. Backups Castro and Farmer could inherit the job, and Jose Miranda is around to handle third base.