By admin 
DETROIT – It was a warm, wet and muggy night at Comerica Park, conditions that are typically conducive to extended ball flight, a fact validated by the Detroit Tigers and Minnesota Twins.
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Both teams rank in the middle of the American League pack when it comes to slugging long balls, but they combined to drive eight balls out of the yard Tuesday.
Kerry Carpenter’s two-run laser shot to right field in the bottom of the fifth put the Tigers up 5-4 and Dillon Dingler’s two-out, three-run blast in the sixth, his second of the game, sent the Tigers on their way to a 10-4 win over the Central Division-rival Twins in the first of three.
The Tigers (28-39) have won six of their seven games in June.
Dingler, who had four hits and four RBI, hit his 15th homer in the first inning and his 16th in the sixth. Riley Greene hit his seventh, an opposite-field shot that sliced around the foul pole in left. The first three homers came off Twins starter Taj Bradley.
Dingler’s second homer came against lefty Taylor Rogers. Twins manager Derek Shelton summoned the lefty to face rookie Kevin McGonigle with two on, knowing the penalty would be the matchup with Dingler.
Dingler has hit seven homers since May 16, tied with Houston’s Yordan Alvarez for most in baseball over that span.
Zach McKinstry, who also walked and singled, set up that sixth inning with a triple to the gap in right-center.
The Twins got their licks in, too.
The Tigers kept giving starter Troy Melton leads and he kept giving them back, in solo homer increments.
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The tone was set on his first pitch. Byron Buxton, as he’s done now 25 times in his career, detonated a first-pitch fastball and sent it 428 feet beyond the visitor’s bullpen in left center.
Melton, who allowed just seven homers in 45.2 innings in the regular season last year, also gave up solo shots to Josh Bell, Brooks Lee and former Tiger Kody Clemens. The last two came on back-to-back pitches in the fifth inning and put the Twins up 4-3.
Melton lasted five innings and had base runners in every one of them.
But the Tigers bullpen, despite some tense moments when the lead was just four runs, held the fort.
Drew Anderson struck out Tristan Gray and Buxton with evil kick-changes to strand two runners in the sixth. Kyle Finnegan struck out Victor Caratini and got Royce Lewis to fly out to the track in the left to leave the bases loaded in the seventh.
The Tigers took advantage of three walks in the seventh to tack on two more runs on a seeing-eye, two-run single by Gleyber Torres.
The start of the game was delayed one hour and 51 minutes and it continued to rain off and on throughout the early part of the game.
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