MINNEAPOLIS -- For the Detroit Tigers, Minnesota is the land of a thousand hits.

At least it seems that way this weekend.

Prince Fielder singled four times and the Tigers totaled 12 hits Saturday afternoon on their way to a 6-3 victory over the Minnesota Twins.

Miguel Cabrera and Andy Dirks each had two hits and two RBIs for the Tigers, who have 28 hits through the first two games of the three-game series.

Max Scherzer struck out nine and pitched extremely well after a bit of a slow start to help the Tigers to the win.

The victory gave the Tigers back-to-back victories for the first time since they completed a three-game sweep of the Kansas City Royals on April 18. Despite their struggles, they are just two games under .500 and trail the Cleveland Indians by 4 1/2 games, pending the outcome of the Indians-White Sox game that started late Saturday afternoon.

"From that perspective, we're OK," Tigers manager Jim Leyland said prior to the game. "It's May 26. We're not out of the race. But do we have to do better and start putting some numbers up on the board? Yeah. Absolutely."

The Tigers started the season with a 9-3 mark but are just 13-21 (.382) since then.

"We've got do do better," Leyland said. "We've got to start doing better. We can't keep floundering around like this and say, 'Well, we'll click it on July 30 and we'll just run away with it and get back in it and win it. That isn't going to happen. You've got to just grind it out every day and win as many games as you can."

The Tigers smacked Twins pitchers around for 16 hits -- including six doubles -- and went 9-for-16 with runners in scoring position in a 10-6 victory Friday night. A day later, the Tigers went 5-for-10 with runners in scoring position and had three doubles, two by Dirks.

The Tigers hit the ball hard in the first inning off Twins starter Carl Pavano while taking a 2-0 lead. Dirks doubled to the wall in right field and scored on a double to the gap in left by Cabrera. Fielder followed with a single to score Cabrera from second to make it 2-0.

The Twins scored a run in the bottom of the first off Scherzer, then tied the game in the second when Justin Morneau led off the inning with a home run to right field that was estimated at 438 feet. It was the ninth home run of the season for Morneau.

The Tigers strung together six consecutive hits with one out in the fifth. After Alex Avila and Ramon Santiago singled, Quintin Berry singled home a run, and Dirks followed with his second double of the game to knock in two runs and make it 5-2. Cabrera singled to make it 6-2, and Fielder singled to put runners on the corners before Delmon Young hit into an inning-ending double play.

In the meantime, Scherzer found his groove. Between the solo home run by Morneau in the second and a solo home run by Denard Span with one out in the sixth, Scherzer retired 13 consecutive batters, including eight on strikeouts.

After the home run by Span made it 6-3, Ben Revere and Joe Mauer had back-to-back singles before rain forced the game to be delayed and chased Scherzer from the ballgame. After a 42-minute delay, Octavio Dotel entered the game and retired the first two batters he faced to get the Tigers out of the jam.

Dotel also pitched the eighth inning and struck out four of the five batters he faced. Scherzer (fifth inning) and Dotel (seventh) both struck out the side against the same three hitters. The sixth through ninth hitters for the Twins went 0-for-11 with 10 strikeouts through the first seven innings.

Scherzer (4-3) allowed three runs on six hits in 5 1/3 innings. He did not issue a walk. Jose Valverde pitched the ninth and earned his eighth save.

Tigers pitchers combined to strike out 16 Twins hitters.

The start of the game was delayed by 21 minutes due to inclement weather in the area.