Yordan Alvarez got a pitch to his liking and the 6-foot-4, 240-pound designated hitter unleashed his might. It was a high fastball from Griffin Jax, right at the top of the zone, and it quickly disappeared into the second deck in right-center field. Alvarez’s ninth-inning home run completed Hous ton’s comeback. Once trailing by six runs, the Astros marched all the way back, using Alvarez’s home run to tie the game and then scoring another pair of runs in the 10th to oust the Twins 9-7 on Sunday afternoon in the series finale at Target Field. Jose Altuve’s RBI single in the 10th off Louie Varland (1-1) gave the Astros, who added an insurance run later in the inning, their first lead since the first inning. “I know he’d been struggling on fastballs up pretty much all series,” Jax said. “Maybe he was over it and ready to get on top of a pitch like that. I’ll go look at it in a little bit and see if I got it to the right spot, but you can’t really second-guess yourself. It’s over.” It may not ease the sting of the moment, but Ryan Jeffers said he would call those pitches — the one to Isaac Paredes, who singled before Alvare,z and the pitch to the designated hitter — again. Or, put in other words: right process, wrong result. “It sucks but that’s kind of how this game works,” Jeffers said. The late loss was a difficult one to take for the Twins (3-6), who were in control of the game for much of it, after scoring three runs in the first, another in the second and three more in the fourth. Leadoff hitter Matt Wallner set the tone for the offense, collecting four hits in the game, which matched his career high. Jeffers drove in a pair of runs and Trevor Larnach brought home three of them. And yet, seven runs wasn’t enough on Sunday. The Twins did not score after the fourth inning, at which point the Astros (4-5) began chipping away at their lead. Up 7-1, Minnesota starting pitcher Chris Paddack found trouble in the fifth inning, walking the first batter. The next batter reached on a double and the third on an error by Willi Castro. Paredes and Alvarez singles ended Paddack’s day with the bases loaded. “I’m hard on myself. I’ve just got to be better,” Paddack said. “I can’t let an inning like that, going out in the fifth, snowball with a leadoff walk when we’ve got a 7-1 lead.” Cole Sands did his best to minimize the damage. But all told, three runs scored in the inning. Houston scored again in the sixth to pull within two, an inning that could have been much worse had Harrison Bader’s diving catch on an Alvarez liner to left field not saved a run, or potentially even two. And that’s where things stood until the ninth inning when Alvarez stepped to the plate and delivered a dagger. “This is going to be a tough one that’s going to bother a lot of people in our clubhouse,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “There’s no doubt about that. And I can’t think we’re wrong for thinking that. It’s a game we should win. It’s a game we need to win.” Related Articles Twins third baseman Royce Lewis progressing from hamstring strain Hustle plays by Byron Buxton, Christian Vazquez pay off for Twins Jose Miranda supplies the power, Bailey Ober the grit in win over Astros Twins center fielder Byron Buxton off and running Twins pitchers combine for rare feat against Astros star Jose Altuve ...read more read less