KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A hellish stretch for the Minnesota Twins is now three weeks old, punctuated by a gut-wrenching loss late Saturday night.
Even though Bailey Ober was on cruise control for seven innings of one-hit ball, Twins manager Rocco Baldelli elected for the high-probability play with his bullpen and it backfired at the worst possible time.
Normally steady as a rock, the high-leverage portion of the Twins’ bullpen took over after Ober’s outstanding, efficient outing and quickly coughed it up.
Jhoan Duran and Griffin Jax combined to surrender five hits and four runs in the eighth inning, and the Kansas City Royals rebounded to hand the Twins a stunning 4-2 defeat in front of 29,160 at Kauffman Stadium. The loss was the 13th for the Twins in 19 games.
“When we have an opportunity to win a nice ballgame, and we have a two-run lead in the eighth inning, we should win the game,” Baldelli said. “Period. That goes without saying. But when you are not able to find a way in those games and you can’t complete it, you can’t finish it, yeah, it’s going to frustrate everyone in the room. … It’s going to bite us and it’s going to hurt and it’s going to feel crappy until we go out there and find a way to pull one out.”
Though there are additional strong candidates in consideration, Saturday’s outcome is the most difficult loss the Twins have absorbed in a stretch in which they went from being a sure thing to earn a wild-card spot to one where they’re now teetering, albeit with a four-game cushion over their closest competitor.
Twins relievers Jhoan Duran, above, and Griffin Jax combined to surrender five hits and four runs in the eighth inning. (Peter Aiken / Imagn Images)
On Aug. 17, the Twins moved to a season-high 17 games over .500 after a comeback win at Texas.
Since then, anything and everything seems to be happening to a short-handed squad that hasn’t hit enough to consistently pull away in winnable games.
The offense’s inability to create space caught up with the Twins again on Saturday as it left a Royals squad that excels at home (44-30) lurking.
Still, the way Ober pitched gave off the feeling the Twins were in control.
Facing the Royals and pitching at Kauffman has been a blight on an otherwise outstanding couple of seasons for Ober. He carried a career 7.71 ERA against Kansas City in nine previous starts, including 19.89 in two outings this season.
But from the moment he first appeared on the field more than 3 1/2 hours before first pitch, doing pregame stretches in the left-field corner, listening to college football and walking around barefoot on the grass, Ober felt locked in.
He demonstrated as much from the outset, too, breezing around a first-inning hit batsman (Salvador Perez) and showing no signs of stress. From swing-and-miss stuff to excellent command to inducing weak contact, Ober never flinched.
Ober thrived after the Twins scored two runs for him in the third inning on a two-out RBI triple by Jose Miranda and an RBI double by Matt Wallner. He retired the side in order in five of seven innings pitched, ending the third and sixth frames by setting down Tommy Pham and Bobby Witt Jr. in each.
When the Royals weren’t flailing at his fastball-changeup combo, they spent the night popping the ball up. The 81.5-mph average exit velocity by Kansas City hitters was the second-lowest against Ober all season.
Ober exited having retired 15 batters in a row and facing only two over the minimum.
“Bailey was amazing, especially against the Royals team that has got to him before,” third baseman Royce Lewis said. “I thought it was very impressive how he came out here and battled. I think his pitch count was still very low, so honestly, he could’ve gone (complete game) if he really wanted to. We had options as a team, which is obviously very good for our manager.”
Sitting at 83 pitches with the Royals’ 6-7-8 hitters due in the eighth, Ober could have continued. But Baldelli already demonstrated he was ready to remove Ober at the first sign of trouble by warming up Cole Sands in the sixth inning, meaning it wasn’t a complete surprise when the manager turned to Duran in the eighth.
Though Ober — who allowed one hit, hit a batter and struck out seven — wanted to continue, he also has complete trust in the back end of a bullpen that has carried the Twins all season.
“After the seventh, I’m thinking maybe I can finish this thing out just because of the low pitch count, and I was on a roll,” Ober said. “I felt like I was locating stuff in and out. Even when I fell behind to Pham 3-0, I was able to strike him out. I felt like I was in control the whole day. Obviously, the competitor in me wants to keep pitching the whole game. I always want to be out there and throw. But I’m totally comfortable with those guys shutting the door. It just didn’t happen (Saturday).”
Fire us up, KC! pic.twitter.com/mAhKDi24mL
— Kansas City Royals (@Royals) September 8, 2024
What happened instead seemed to occur in a flash.
Baldelli called upon Duran, who has converted 22 of 24 save tries this season, but struggled in non-save situations. Duran fell behind Michael Massey in the count 3-1 before recovering to strike him out.
But it got no easier as Freddy Fermin singled to left-center, snapping a stretch of 16 straight Royals hitters retired. Duran got ahead 1-2 in the count to Robbie Grossman but hit him with a curveball, and Kyle Isbel followed with an RBI single that ended the tall right-hander’s night.
“I know we (needed) that game, so I feel bad right now,” Duran said. “I tried to strike (Grossman) out with a curveball and hit his foot. … I’m ready for whatever inning they want to put me in. I felt good. I don’t know what happened.”
It happened to Jax, too.
He took over and induced a 59-mph grounder to the shortstop off Pham’s bat. But Lewis’s path to the ball was obstructed by Grossman — an argument Baldelli made after the play to no avail — and shortstop Brooks Lee threw low to first, the ball skipping past Kyle Farmer, which allowed the tying run to score at 2 and left runners on the corners with one out.
Witt followed with a bloop single to center to give Kansas City a 3-2 lead. One out later, MJ Melendez singled in a run to make it a two-run game.
Afterward, Baldelli was resolute in his decision-making.
“Once you get into the eighth and ninth innings of games and you have exceptional relievers that you can bring into the game, that’s their job,” Baldelli said. “That’s their job to go out there and do it. And they do do it. They do it for us a lot, and they’re good at what they do. And (Saturday), with the help of that unusual play and maybe some things we should have done better out there, we didn’t get the win.”
Fortunately for the Twins, they’re still in a position where devastating losses won’t wreck their season — not yet at least. But with 20 games to go, they’re running out of wiggle room.
All of the torment of the past three weeks could prove to be for naught as long as the Twins figure out how to rediscover their winning ways. There’s hope that Carlos Correa and Byron Buxton will soon return to the lineup, though there’s still no certainty on those fronts.
But at the very least, the Twins have left themselves vulnerable for yet another late-season collapse.
“We’ve got to keep our heads up,” Ober said. “We can’t act like we’re out of this. We’re right there where we want to be. We’re in a playoff push. We’ve got to keep playing hard and finish strong.”
(Top photo of Bailey Ober: Ed Zurga / Getty Images)
