MINNEAPOLIS — The six-week-long limp to the finish line finally fell short Friday night.
Faced with an opportunity to extend their season at least one more game, the Minnesota Twins failed to take advantage of the moment. Though their chances ultimately were dashed by a pitching staff that ran out of gas late, the Twins once again were felled by an offense that couldn’t break through in a 7-2 loss to the Baltimore Orioles in front of 26,058 at Target Field.
Losers for the 25th time in 37 contests, the Twins frittered away their last-gasp effort at reaching the playoffs with another dud. A night after suffering a 2-for-19 showing with runners in scoring position against one of the sport’s worst teams, a Twins offense that in July registered fifth in the majors in runs scored wound up with four hits and didn’t score until it faced a seven-run deficit in the final inning.
Now, a team that on Aug. 17 had a 92.4 percent chance of making the playoffs is tasked with an offseason full of introspection and trying to determine what happened.
“I will look at myself in the mirror,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. “I think all of our guys will also do the same. We needed more. And it wasn’t just in one direction. Or in one part of the group. We needed to finish the way we needed to finish. It was clearly beyond a disappointing way to end a run and what was, and appeared to be, a promising season that we had going.”
In the end, the Twins simply found themselves incapable of handling the numerous obstacles they faced.
The Twins were resilient in the face of those challenges early in the season and somehow headed into the second half of August with a 70-53 record.
None of it, not ownership’s decision to slash payroll by $30 million coming off an encouraging 2023 postseason, the front office’s risky starting pitching plan which partly resulted from budgetary limits, an offense that struggled to hit for the first month, or a roster depleted by key injuries to Royce Lewis, Carlos Correa or Byron Buxton could slow down the Twins.
Despite those issues, the team played incredible baseball and looked like an imposing squad as it headed into the final 40 games.
And then it all fell apart.
“We were riding the high for so long,” starting pitcher Pablo López said. “Everything was going well. Things were fun. Things were clicking and then nothing was clicking. … Whenever we (go) through the whole self-reflection, it’s not only on the field, but off the field. Good, winning teams have stuff that prevents bad stretches like this, what happened for too long. Whenever you have a really, really good clubhouse or whatever, they prevent five-game losing streaks. It might be a three-game losing streak, but you were able to turn things around quicker. Yeah, there’s going to be a lot of talk on what we could have done better, not just on the field, (but) off the field.”
The first domino fell on July 12 when All-Star shortstop Correa went on the injured list with plantar fasciitis in his right foot. What Correa originally hoped would be a brief absence turned into 53 games. Despite losing their best player and a key voice in the clubhouse, the Twins played .500 ball for the next month, managing to stay 13 games above .500.
But the pile of key injuries kept growing.
Hoping for a boost from Brock Stewart in late July, the Twins instead learned their high-octane reliever would need season-ending shoulder surgery.
Next came a trade-deadline effort some Twins described as “disheartening” in which no meaningful players were added. Whereas Kansas City and Cleveland each added multiple players, the Twins were outbid by Houston for the services of starting pitcher Yusei Kikuchi and wound up only adding a reliever they discarded less than a month later.
The obstacles continued to pile up.
On Aug. 7, Joe Ryan suffered a season-ending injury.
Already thinned out by a combination of offseason spending limitations, deadline inactivity and injuries to Chris Paddack and Anthony DeSclafani, the Twins were forced to rely on three inexperienced arms who’d never pitched more innings in their careers.
While those pitchers — Simeon Woods Richardson, David Festa and Zebby Matthews — performed admirably and gained experience that should help in the future, they also struggled with inexperience, and at times diminished stuff. If that weren’t enough, the coaching staff clearly didn’t trust the rookies to pitch deep into games.
The combination of shorter starts, injuries to key relievers and a failure by the front office to produce any additional outside bullpen help led to key relievers carrying a heavy workload down the stretch.
“This will bother me forever. There will be no way around that.”
Rocco reacts after the Twins lose and get eliminated from playoff contention. #MNTwins pic.twitter.com/TfD4Dn8eDb
— Bally Sports North (@BallySportsNOR) September 28, 2024
The last blow was the struggles of an offense that produced 4.9 runs per game into mid-August.
Once one of baseball’s most formidable groups, the Twins became punchless without Correa and Byron Buxton, who went on the injured list on Aug. 12 with right-hip inflammation.
After returning from a devastating injury with authority in June, Lewis mostly disappeared down the stretch, openly noting his exhaustion and struggling with the team’s attempt to work him in at second base. One of baseball’s hottest hitters in June and July, Jose Miranda stopped hitting for power. Second-year infielder Edouard Julien regressed early in the season from his breakout 2023 campaign and never recovered. Rookie Brooks Lee showed flashes of his top-prospect potential early but then struggled with swing decisions the rest of the season. All-Star Willi Castro and veteran first baseman Carlos Santana also faded down the stretch, as did just about anybody in the lineup.
Suddenly, a team that looked unstoppable instead found itself on a downward slope in front of a snowball speeding out of control.
“It’s a disappointing season, to say the least,” Correa said. “We fell short obviously of the goals we had, and for the talent in this room, there was so much more to accomplish. We just didn’t have it and we fell short. It’s too premature (to know what went wrong). I’ll have to sit at home for a couple of days and just go through everything that happened in the year. If you have anybody to blame, blame me for going down for two months and not being a part of the team. I think that’s one of the main reasons.”
Clearly, the reasons for the Twins’ epic collapse aren’t limited to one player.
But now a team hoping to capitalize on the glory of 2023 is headed for a long winter at home taking stock of how this all fell apart.
Rather than thinking about another fun October, a fan base that was frustrated from the get-go by the team’s payroll reduction will focus on six moribund weeks of play, the role played by an ownership group that “right-sized the business” and every other shortcoming that was exposed during nearly 1 1/2 months spent in baseball purgatory.
“You cannot take anything for granted in Major League Baseball,” Baldelli said. “Nothing is given to you. I actually said that to our guys, a reminder. ‘No one’s going to slow down for you, no one’s going to feel bad for you if you’re struggling, if you’re dealing with injuries.’ That’s why the season is so long. Major League Baseball’s schedule takes a lot into account — who’s going to last, who’s going to ultimately do enough over the course of six months. That’s the reality of it. There were parts of the season where we played pretty freaking good. But not good enough.”
(Photo of Willi Castro and Twins teammates as reality sets in late in Friday’s game: Adam Bettcher / Getty Images)
