Brooks Lee's grand slam off Chris Paddack helps Twins end skid, beat Tigers 8-1

Phil Miller, The Minnesota Star Tribune on Aug 17, 2025

Published in Baseball

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MINNEAPOLIS — It’s going to be so awkward in that boat the next time Chris Paddack and Brooks Lee go fishing.

That’s because Lee turned on a letter-high fastball from his greater Minnesota fishing buddy Sunday and drove it into the right-field seats, a grand slam that helped power the Minnesota Twins to an 8-1 victory over the Detroit Tigers at Target Field.

The win ended the Twins’ three-game losing streak and prevented the Tigers from making some division-foe history: Detroit last swept a four-game series from the Twins in 1983 and had never, in the series’ 65-year-history, done so in Minnesota.

Still haven’t thanks to the Twins’ rude welcome home to Paddack, whose four-season tenure at Target Field ended three days before the trade deadline last month. The right-hander, who has now made two starts against his former teammates and lost both, tied his season high by allowing three home runs.

Royce Lewis smacked a two-out solo shot to left field in the second inning, Byron Buxton bashed a first-pitch upper-deck shot to lead off the third, and Lee capped the six-run third inning by becoming the first Twin since July 5, 2024, to hit a home run with the bases loaded.

In all, Paddack served up nine hits, three walks and eight runs to his former team, though he pitched into the sixth inning because of the Tigers’ overused bullpen.

Thomas Hatch, a journeyman right-hander picked up off the waiver wire in the wake of the Paddack trade, was far more efficient in helping the Twins limit the Tigers to fewer than three runs for just the third time in 13 meetings this year. Hatch, facing Detroit for only the second time in his career, gave up just three hits over five innings, striking out four. Colt Keith’s double in the third inning turned into a run when Kerry Carpenter followed with a line-drive single to right.

But Hatch escaped that jam with no further damage, and Twins relievers Michael Tonkin, Cole Sands, newcomer Génesis Cabrera and Erasmo Ramírez didn’t allow so much as a baserunner in the final four innings, combining to strike out eight of the 12 hitters they faced.

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