Cleveland Guardians at Minnesota Twins: Final Score & Recap

The Cleveland Guardians quieted Target Field on September 11, 2026, defeating the Minnesota Twins 5-2 in a game that remained tightly contested through six innings before Cleveland broke it open late. The DiamondIQ model had pegged this as a coin flip at game's start, with the home win probability sitting at 50%, but by the final out that figure had fallen to zero as the Guardians seized control with a dominant finish.

The decisive moment came in the top of the seventh, when Angel Martínez launched a home run off A.J. Minter that shifted win probability by 27.6 percentage points in Cleveland's favor, the single largest swing of the game. Minnesota briefly responded in the bottom half, with Kaelen Culpepper singling off Hunter Gaddis to produce a 16.4-point swing for the Twins, keeping the deficit manageable at that stage. Cleveland then put the game away in the ninth against Yoendrys Gómez, with Brayan Rocchio delivering a double worth 25.2 percentage points followed immediately by another Martínez double that added 21.1 more, the Guardians scoring three times in the frame to make it 5-2.

Martínez was the clear standout, finishing with a combined WPA of plus-41.0 and an RE24 of plus-1.8 across his home run and ninth-inning double. Rocchio contributed a WPA of plus-22.9 and an RE24 of plus-1.6, while Travis Bazzana added plus-20.7 WPA and plus-1.5 RE24 to round out Cleveland's most impactful offensive contributors. On the mound, Taj Bradley led all pitchers with a WPA of plus-29.7, anchoring a Guardians staff that allowed just two runs on six hits without committing an error. Minnesota's lone threatening moment came in the second inning, when Royce Lewis doubled off Parker Messick for an 8.4-point swing, but the Twins could not convert that opportunity into the kind of sustained pressure needed to hold off Cleveland.