Elly De La Cruz grand slam sinks Twins as Reds win 8-4

Elly De La Cruz stood in the batting box and stopped the ball as Twins reliever Jorge Alcala watched his 89-mph slider hit into the right-field stands.

De La Cruz celebrated his first career grand slam. Alcala and the Twins saw the playoff race for the American League’s final wild-card spot tighten after an 8-4 loss in Friday’s series opener at Target Field. The Twins have lost five of their last seven games and 13 of their last 20.

The Twins hold a 2½-game lead over Detroit for the third wild-card with 15 games remaining in the regular season. In the American League Central, the Twins trail Cleveland by 5½ games and Kansas City by 2½ games.

“It’s now or never, really,” said Bailey Ober, who was charged with five runs in 6 2/3 innings. “We’ve got to go out there, play hard and win games. The only way we’re going to make the playoffs is if we go out there and do our business the right way.”

Alcala, who inherited two runners on base with two outs in the seventh inning, has been unreliable the past three weeks, issuing a five-pitch walk to Jonathan India before delivering his grand slam to De La Cruz.

In Alcala’s last eight outings, he has allowed 13 hits, 10 runs and five homers. When counting inherited runners, he has had only two clean outings since Aug. 18, during which his ERA rose from 2.15 to 3.59.

“We need Alcala to go into that game, pitch well and keep us in the game,” Twins Manager Rocco Baldelli said. “We didn’t get that today, but that’s what we need from guys. When you lose the lead, you’re not out of the game. We showed that. We came back, scored some runs, got some baserunners on and made some things happen. We were just too far out of the game.”

The seventh inning went south for Ober after he gave up a leadoff triple off the right-field wall to Spencer Steer, a former Twins prospect who was sent to Cincinnati in the Tyler Mahle trade in 2022. On the next pitch, in a tie game, TJ Friedl threw a picture-perfect squeeze bunt down the first-base line. Ober tried to throw the ball toward the plate with his glove, but there was no realistic play as Steer easily scored the go-ahead run without sliding.