MILWAUKEE -- The Twins spent Sunday afternoon trying to solve something that, at times, barely looked solvable.
Jacob Misiorowski was throwing 103.9 mph. His fastball exploded at the top of the zone. He struck out nine. He threw 21 consecutive four-seamers to start the game.
And somehow, Minnesota survived him. That might have been the cruelest part.
The Twins hit two homers off Misiorowski, matched the most runs he has allowed in any of his 22 starts this season and carried a 3-3 tie into extra innings, only to fall, 4-3, on Jake Bauers’ walk-off single in the 10th inning Sunday at American Family Field.
For the second straight day, the Twins lost by the same score. This one stung in a different way.
“That’s elite stuff,” manager Derek Shelton said of Misiorowski. “That’s one of the top two or three guys in the game.”
Minnesota spent the first trip through the order seeing exactly why.
Misiorowski overwhelmed the Twins early with a fastball that reached triple digits seemingly at will. Brooks Lee described the combination of velocity, extension and Misiorowski’s position on the first-base side of the rubber as unlike anything he had seen.
“103 is something I’ve never seen before,” Lee said. “When he gets down the mound, the ball just explodes out of his hand.”
So the Twins adjusted.
Lee finally broke through in the fifth, turning around a 99.4 mph fastball for a solo homer that tied the game.
“You’ve got to have a short swing to hit ’em,” Lee said. “And it worked out.”
Milwaukee answered with two runs in the bottom half, but again Minnesota refused to let the game get away.
Josh Bell drew a two-out walk in the sixth before Kody Clemens jumped on another Misiorowski fastball -- this one also at 99.1 mph -- and drove it into the Twins’ bullpen for a game-tying two-run homer.
It was Clemens’ 20th homer of the season, a new career high.
“Unless you’re Brooks, if he throws a fastball in the upper part of the zone, I feel like it’s damn near impossible to hit,” Clemens said. “It comes out of his hand and you feel like you see it well, and then it’s by you.”
The Twins were able to get to the ones that weren’t.
Misiorowski finished six innings allowing three runs on four hits and one walk. Fifty of his fastballs registered above 100 mph, yet Minnesota entered the late innings even.
Shelton credited the adjustment his hitters made once they got another look.
“He came out, fastball was really good, and then we made an adjustment the second time through,” Shelton said.
Connor Prielipp did his part to keep Minnesota close.
Pitching near his hometown of Tomah, Wis., and inside the ballpark he grew up visiting as a Brewers fan, Prielipp allowed a leadoff homer to Jackson Chourio before settling down. The left-hander struck out seven over five innings and allowed three runs.
“Being a lifelong Brewers fan and then finally getting to pitch here, it was awesome,” Prielipp said.
Once Misiorowski departed, however, the challenge didn’t get much easier.
Minnesota loaded the bases in both the seventh and eighth innings and came away empty each time. The Twins finished 1-for-11 with runners in scoring position and left nine runners on base.
“We had opportunities to capitalize on, and we did not capitalize on them,” Shelton said.
Then Luis Lara started taking hits away.
The Brewers right fielder made a leaping grab near the wall to rob Lee in the sixth before producing an even more painful encore in the 10th. Clemens drove a ball deep to right with the automatic runner aboard, and for a moment he thought Minnesota had finally broken through.
“I said, ‘I hope it carries,’” Clemens said. “As soon as he got to the wall, it was like, ‘Hell yeah, it’s going to be off the wall or over.’ And he made an unbelievable catch.”
Lee had a slightly different description.
“All of a sudden, he’s Spider-Manning, making the play,” Lee said.
The Twins dropped two of three to the team with baseball’s best record and finished their nine-game road trip 3-6, with five of the losses coming by one run and three in walk-off fashion.
They head home at 58-61, 1 1/2 games behind Texas for the final American League Wild Card spot.
Sunday showed they could adjust to one of baseball’s most overpowering pitchers. They could match him. They could survive him. They just couldn’t finish it.
“I thought we played them well,” Clemens said. “We lost those last two games late in the game. Sometimes that’s how it goes.”