The intrigue in left-hander Hector Santiago for the Twins is that he presents something different than his predecessor, Ricky Nolasco. Well, he's supposed to.
But in his Target Field debut, Santiago went through the same struggles as the man he was traded for.
Santiago fumbled a lead and was knocked out in the sixth inning Tuesday, and Houston beat the Twins, 7-5, for only the Astros' third victory of the month.
Even falling to 10-6, Santiago has a record other Twins starters can't come close to matching. And he won all six starts in July before being traded. But he is known for walking batters, high pitch counts early in games and giving up home runs _ the 22 homers off him entering Tuesday are more than any of his new teammates have surrendered.
And Twins fans definitely saw all sides of Santiago on Tuesday.
Houston took a 2-0 lead in the first inning. Alex Bregman doubled to start the game but was thrown out at home trying to score on Jose Altuve's single. Altuve then jogged home on Carlos Correa's home run to right.
Altuve was back in the lineup after getting Monday off, and is resuming his MVP campaign. Houston had gone seven games without a home run before Correa's shot. Altuve went on to go 4-for-4 with an RBI, putting him 11 hits shy of 1,000 for his career.
"I've never seen him have a bad at-bat," Twins manager Paul Molitor said of Altuve before the game.
Santiago then went to 3-2 counts five times over the next four innings. It led to runners getting on base and things getting hairy. But Santiago has wiggled his way out of trouble before. Brian Dozier ended the third by making a diving stop of Bregman's blooper. Altuve reached third with one out in the fourth, but Santiago got Marwin Gonzalez to ground out and struck out Evan Gattis.
For that, Santiago was rewarded with a lead in the middle innings.
Miguel Sano smashed Mike Fiers' first pitch of the second for a home run to make the score 2-1. Robbie Grossman, who broke in with the Astros in 2013, hit a two-run homer in the fifth, and that was followed by Brian Dozier with a homer to give the Twins a 4-2 lead. It was the 10th time the Twins have hit back-to-back homers this year.
Santiago had a two-run lead heading into the sixth and proceed to do what Nolasco frequently did _ hand it back.
The first three batters of the inning reached base, with two scoring on Correa's single off the wall in right. The second run was unearned, as Max Kepler dropped the ball while trying to get a throw off. A third run scored on a groundout, and Houston led 5-4. That was all for Santiago, who threw 83 pitches over 5 1/3 innings.
It was the second time in the past 11 games Houston has scored more than three runs.
In two starts with the Twins, Santiago has given up eight earned runs over 10 1/3 innings. He came to the Twins 33-32 with a 3.70 ERA in his career, so he was doing something right to stay over .500 and under 4.00. The mission is to figure out how to get Santiago to show that kind of talent while in their uniform.
Trevor Plouffe was thrown out in the sixth trying to score from second on Jorge Polanco's single, and Houston added single runs in the seventh and ninth innings. The Twins scored a run off new Astros closer Ken Giles, but with Joe Mauer on first he struck out Max Kepler for his second save.
