Nelson Cruz did his best with 868 feet of homers on Saturday, but on a day where seemingly nothing else was working for the Twins, the club finally saw its grip on first place slip away.

Entering Saturday’s doubleheader against the fourth-place Tigers, the Twins sat in a three-way tie for the American League Central lead with Cleveland and the White Sox. By the time Detroit put the finishing touches on a 4-2 victory in the second game and a sweep of the twin bill, the Twins sat alone in third place, looking up at a 1 1/2-game margin separating themselves and first-place Cleveland.

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“Today, we knew it was going to be a long day,” Tyler Duffey said. “Two sevens [inning games] is better than 18, I guess, but when you lose both, it sucks just as much as a normal doubleheader does.”

The Twins dropped the first game, 8-2, after the Tigers pelted Randy Dobnak, arguably Minnesota’s most consistent starter this season, with a hail of singles. In the second loss, Detroit got the better of another Twins strength -- the back end of the bullpen -- as Trevor May and Duffey allowed two-run homers that accounted for all of the Tigers’ scoring.

Minnesota has now dropped four consecutive games, including the final two of a three-game series in Cleveland.

“The quality and the outcome of the at-bats, it wasn’t enough,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “We’re going to have to do more. We’re going to have to find a way to get more baserunners out there, and win those at-bats when we’re in the middle of the at-bat or late in the at-bat, and find a way to make something happen. When things aren’t coming easily, you lean on your process and everything that goes into having those good at-bats, and today, nothing really came together.”

All the while, the Twins’ offense added only four more hits to the four from the first game, as Tigers rookie left-hander Tarik Skubal turned in an effective outing of his own following Matthew Boyd’s gem earlier in the afternoon to again silence Minnesota’s bats. Boyd and Skubal picked up their first wins of the season against a Twins offense that has struggled to hit left-handers this season.

The lone bright spot in the lineup was Cruz, who followed a 437-foot blast in the first game with another moonshot projected by Statcast at 431 feet in the fourth inning to boost his home run total to 13, tying him with San Diego superstar Fernando Tatis Jr. for the Major League lead.

As Duffey pointed out, it was a matter of two pitches that separated the Twins from being second and third in the division after Saturday -- the center-cut fastball that Jeimer Candelario hit off of May, and the fastball that Miguel Cabrera smacked off of Duffey.

Small errors in the game; more noticeable difference in the standings.

“We’re all ultimately on the same playing field,” Duffey said. “We know where we’re at, we know where we should be, we know where we can be. I don’t think there’s any question about that.”

There’s an awareness in the clubhouse that reinforcements are on the way. This isn’t the full-strength Twins team that raced off to a 10-2 start, after all, with one-third of the starting lineup, two starting pitchers and two members of the Opening Day bullpen on the injured list.

That’s a major reason that Duffey and others have framed things in the context of where they “should be” and “can be” throughout this challenging 2020 season. As the calendar prepares to turn to September, the urgency will soon start to mount -- and the standings reflected that after Saturday’s games.

“I’m sure there is [urgency] -- everybody collectively,” Duffey said. “Day to day is still so different. The day-to-day routine, it’s still -- it’s not what we’re used to. And some games feel different from others, from the start. ... Tomorrow, Kenta [Maeda] is going to show up and do his thing. We’ve all got to reset tonight and just come back ready to play and try to get one out of here and get back to health.”