The Twins and Cleveland battled like the American League Central was on the line.
Because it kind of was.
Heading into the game, the Twins held a slim one-game lead on the Guardians in the American League Central standings. And nine innings wasn't enough to decide Tuesday's meeting.
Andres Gimenez broke the deadlock in the top of the 11th inning, delivering an RBI single with Griffin Jax on the mound. The Guardians held that lead to outlast the Twins 6-5 in the first game of a three-game series.
Cleveland (35-28) had been surging with a 15-4 record since May 30, while the Twins (38-31) had fallen off a bit to 9-11 in that same timeframe.
That seemed to play out initially in front of an announced 22,341 fans at Target Field, when Twins starter Joe Ryan let in three hits and a run from Oscar Gonzalez' RBI double in the first inning.
This was just Ryan's second game back after recovering from COVID-19, and after a clean second inning, he surrendered another three hits and two runs in the third, the latter off of Josh Naylor's home run.
Ryan managed to last six innings and 101 pitches, striking out all three of his final batters. He ended with seven hits, a walk and seven strikeouts along with those three runs.
The Twins didn't make it on to the scoreboard until the fourth inning, when Alex Kirilloff smacked a two-run double. Cleveland starter Aaron Civale pitched five innings and gave up just five hits and a walk plus seven strikeouts along with the pair of runs.
Luis Arraez proved once again why he's MLB's top hitter, blasting a three-run home run to the right-field deck in the bottom of the seventh inning to leapfrog the Guardians and give the Twins their first lead. After that homer, scattered "MVP" chants broke out around the stadium for the Venezuelan, who leads the league in batting average at .362 and on-base percentage at .442.
But Emilio Pagan took the mound with a two-run lead in the eighth inning and squandered it, allowing a Franmil Reyes two-run homer to the center-field wall that tied the game at 5-5.
"Competitive, resilient, they keep fighting no matter what until the last out," Byron Buxton said of the Guardians pregame. "So haven't watched them or paid attention to them much. But just the three games we've played them [before Tuesday], they're tough, and they always give us a run for our money, and it's always a great competition. So it's nothing unexpected but a dogfight."
