MINNEAPOLIS >> Riley Greene is not new to this. He’s been through hitting droughts in each of his previous three seasons. That doesn’t make them any less difficult to navigate, but his his faith in the knowledge that this too shall pass gets stronger each time he fights his way out of one.

“This is a hard game,” Greene said Sunday after going 0 for 4 and stranding three runners in scoring position in the Tigers’ 5-1 loss to the Minnesota Twins in the series finale at Target Field. “Those guys on the other side get paid money to get us out. So it’s a hard game. Just show up every day with a smile on your face.”

Greene presently is in a 1-for-24 skid with 14 strikeouts. He struck out three times Sunday.

“I’m missing fastballs right down the middle,” he said. “It just can’t happen. I’m trying to get on time and be aggressive and not guess. I find myself guessing sometimes when I get in these kinds of things. Just stay aggressive and keep trusting it.”

In his first at-bat against Twins’ right-handed starter Simeon Woods Richardson, with Kerry Carpenter at second, he missed two center-cut fastballs and then swung over the top of a slider. In the third, with Trey Sweeney at third, he swung too early at a changeup and then was tardy on a 94-mph fastball.

In the fifth, he finally barreled one up. With runners at first and second and two outs, he scorched a changeup, 104 mph off his bat. But the ball when straight up in the air to right.

“I had three opportunities with runners in scoring position and I went 0 for 3,” Greene said. “Got to be better. That can’t happen.”

Manager AJ Hinch said he planned to give Greene the start of the game off Monday in Milwaukee just to reset.

“I think he’s just missing pitches to hit,” Hinch said. “The majority of it is, he’s getting a pitch or two to hit during the at-bat and when he misses, it starts piling up on him a little and then the chase comes. Easier said than done from the sideline. When you are in the box and going through it, you know, he’s feeling it.

“He’s not going to start the game tomorrow, but he may have the biggest at-bat. We know he’s one swing away from doing damage. He just missed that pitch (he hit) to right field, which would have changed the complexion of this game.”

The other side of this game was the somewhat star-crossed start by Casey Mize.

“It was kind of (the Twins’) day on a lot of fronts,” Hinch said.

Out of the 74 pitches he threw in his 5.2 innings, there were just two Mize would like back. Both of those were hit out of the park.

“It certainly wasn’t my best,” said Mize, whose line shows he gave up four runs and seven hits. “But I feel like I was just a couple of things going my way from that outing looking a little different. But still, I made some mistakes that I want back.

“Overall, I feel like if I do what I did today over 30 starts, the outcome is going to be better more times than not.”

Byron Buxton, who had two hits and scorched three balls off Mize, lined a 3-2, center-cut fastball into the left-field seats in the first inning. The ball left his bat at 112.5 mph.

Then leading off the sixth, he left a two-strike splitter up and over the plate to lefty-swinging Edouard Julien. Julien, with a late swing, lined it off the opposite-field foul pole in left.

The second one gnawed at Mize a little. One, he and Julien were teammates at Auburn. Two, it’s a sliced ball that was heading foul before it clipped the outside of the pole.

“It’s a mistake and he’s a good hitter,” Mize said. “The pitch drifted over the plate. I was upset that it stayed in the yard. That’s what I mean by things going my way. If that goes foul, things might look a little better.”

The other runs came off of mishits and some fielding mistakes.

“He was a little unlucky,” catcher Dillon Dingler said. “I’m not going to discredit any of the hitters. That’s baseball. But some of those squeezed through and some dropped that were frustrating.”

A wild pitch and a seeing-eye, two-out single by Brooks Lee produced a run in the second inning and a swinging bunt single by Willi Castro and misplay by second baseman Gleyber Torres produced a second run in the sixth.

With runners at first and third, Mize got Ty France to bounce one up the middle. Both Torres and shortstop Sweeney chased it. Torres fielded it behind the bag and flipped it to the bag. Except nobody was there. Sweeney had already ran past the base.

“They chipped away at him a little bit,” Hinch said. “They got some opportunistic hits and ended up working their way through the game and getting him out of there.”

For the majority of his start, Mize was a picture of efficiency. He set down 10 straight hitters and needed just 25 pitches to go through the Twins lineup from the third through the fifth.

“They were just swinging, so I was throwing a ton of strikes,” Mize said. “There didn’t feel like there were many deep counts, even, where I could expand the zone. I was just throwing stuff in the zone more so than not and they kept putting it in play.

“I will take that if they give it to me, but that’s going to lead to them finding holes every now and then.”

Spencer Torkelson, who continues to own Target Field, provided the Tigers’ lone run. He hit another towering home run, torching a fastball from Woods Richardson leading off the fourth. The ball left his bat at 110 mph and carried into the second deck in left.

It was his fifth homer of the season and at Target Field in his career, he’s hitting .321 (18 for 56) with three doubles seven home runs and 14 RBI in 14 games.

“He’s staying really grounded with what he’s doing and what he’s trying to do,” Hinch said. “There is a mixture of good approach, good execution and long at-bats and he’s staying within himself. We need him. He’s in the middle of the order for a reason and he’s earned his way back into that.”

The Tigers ability to grab early leads in the first two wins in the series kept them from having to deal with the back of the Twins’ bullpen. They got a taste of it Sunday and it wasn’t pleasant.

They managed one base runner, a walk by Sweeney, over the final four innings.