{"id":798776,"date":"2026-09-07T08:57:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-07T08:57:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/798776\/"},"modified":"2026-09-07T08:57:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T08:57:16","slug":"joe-ryan-set-to-return-as-twins-open-series-with-tigers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/798776\/","title":{"rendered":"Joe Ryan set to return as Twins open series with Tigers"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Minnesota Twins<\/a> have already clinched the season series against the Detroit Tigers<\/a>. The Twins will try to tack on a few more victories against their American League Central rival when they square off in a three-game series in Detroit, beginning Monday afternoon.<\/p>\n

The Twins (68-75) have won seven of the first 10 meetings, and the two teams won’t play again after this week. Minnesota is hoping to stay on the fringe of the playoff chase, while the Tigers (65-78) have fallen well off the pace.<\/p>\n

Right-hander Troy Melton will start the series opener for Detroit. Melton (7-4, 2.20 ERA) has been the team’s best starter since coming off the injured list in late May, but he’s been less effective in recent outings, giving up at least three runs in each of his last three appearances.<\/p>\n

Melton’s worst outing of the season came against the host Twins on Tuesday. He gave up seven runs (five earned) and six hits in 5 1\/3 innings. Kody Clemens hit a solo homer off him in the first inning, and Royce Lewis launched a three-run shot in the sixth as Minnesota romped 15-2.<\/p>\n

“The slider to Lewis was really bad,” Melton said. “It was right down the middle. On the other ones, I was just trying to get ahead. Process-wise, I don’t think it was as bad as the results were. I think I’ve had a lot of starts where the process was worse than that and the results were better.”<\/p>\n

Melton also gave up four solo homers to the Twins, including another from Clemens, in a five-inning June start.<\/p>\n

The Twins are expected to welcome the return of right-hander Joe Ryan (6-8, 3.65), who has been sidelined since early August due to a strained left glute muscle.<\/p>\n

“I would say it’s a very strong chance that Joe’s going to start that game,” Twins manager Derek Shelton said Sunday.<\/p>\n

Ryan had a three-inning rehab start on Tuesday and successfully completed a bullpen session on Saturday.<\/p>\n

“It felt good to get out there,” Ryan told MLB.com. “It felt better than … I was throwing as hard as I was in the rehab game in the bullpen early. That’s probably a good thing. … I just felt better on a couple of things I was trying to work on this week, and I was able to touch those. I was happy with that.”<\/p>\n

Ryan is 5-2 with a 3.43 ERA in 10 career starts against the Tigers.<\/p>\n

Detroit suffered three walk-off losses in four games at Cleveland over the weekend. The Tigers have dropped 17 of their last 22 games.<\/p>\n

“The walk-offs are painful,” Tigers manager A.J. Hinch said. “It’s the worst feeling coming off somebody else’s field while they’re celebrating. We’ve played a ton of close games against these guys, but close games don’t matter unless you win. I like our fight. I like that our guys are in it. We’re not going to quit. We’re not going to concede. Now we get to go home for a series. But this was a rough trip.”<\/p>\n

The Twins lost 10-1 to the Chicago White Sox on Sunday.<\/p>\n

–Field Level Media<\/p>\n

\n Copyright 2026 STATS LLC and Field Level Media. Any commercial use or distribution without the express written consent of STATS LLC and Field Level Media is strictly prohibited.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Minnesota Twins have already clinched the season series against the Detroit Tigers. The Twins will try to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":794230,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2386],"tags":[5,147,53,2583,60,4,594],"class_list":["post-798776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-detroit-tigers","tag-baseball","tag-detroit","tag-detroit-tigers","tag-detroittigers","tag-minnesota-twins","tag-mlb","tag-tigers"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/117228931892858570","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=798776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/794230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=798776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=798776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=798776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}