crowd-pleaser
Matt Wallner will strike out. He struck out three times for Minnesota on Tuesday night. Matt Wallner will also hit home runs, big ones, like the game-turning grand slam the ex-Southern Miss star stroked Tuesday night for the Twins in a 5-3 win over Detroit. “That’s not one we will forget. That was more than a nice swing,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli told mlb.com. Wallner’s 450-foot bomb to right-center field was his first career slam in the big leagues, and it earned the Minnesota native and lifelong Twins fan a curtain call from the 30,000-plus at Target Field. The win kept the first-place Twins 4.5 games ahead of Cleveland in the American League Central. Wallner said in a postgame TV interview that his swing felt terrible at the start of the night, but that changed in the sixth inning when he sent a pitch from Will Vest into the upper deck. “Just felt like I hit it about as good as I could,” the lefty-hitting outfielder said in an Associated Press article. The 6-foot-4, 220-pound Wallner has struck out 36 times in 104 at-bats over 38 games for Minnesota this season. He also has belted nine homers, five in his last 15 games. Lots of K’s, lots of bombs: That’s the yin and yang of many contemporary sluggers. Wallner mashed a school-record 58 homers in three seasons at USM, a show of power that got him drafted 38th overall in 2019. He made his MLB debut last September and, of course, homered in his first game. P.S. Mississippi State product Dakota Hudson improved to 3-0 in three starts since returning to St. Louis’ rotation. He went 6 2/3 (two runs) in a 6-2 win against Oakland. … Former Madison Central High standout Spencer Turnbull, on a rehab assignment for Detroit, allowed six runs in five innings for Triple-A Toledo. … Drew Lugbauer, the Mississippi Braves’ all-time home run king, hit a homer in his first game for Triple-A Gwinnett. Lugbauer, promoted on Tuesday, hit 68 homers over three seasons for the Double-A M-Braves. … At Trustmark Park, Biloxi’s Jacob Misiorowski, Milwaukee’s No. 4 prospect, yielded one hit in six dominant innings as the first-place Shuckers beat the last-place M-Braves 3-0 in the Southern League. Looking like a right-handed Chris Sale, the 6-foot-7 Misiorowski struck out 12 batters. The M-Braves fanned 17 times all told.