DENVER -- As the Twins await the end of the pandemonium in the American League Wild Card race that will determine their opponent in next week’s first-round playoff series at Target Field, the results of these games do not matter to them outside of staying healthy -- but it still would have been more reassuring to them for Joe Ryan to have had a better regular-season finale.

In Ryan’s final outing before he presumably gears up for a playoff start in his next appearance, he allowed six runs in five frames, including three homers, his most since returning from injury, in a 7-6 victory over the Rockies on Friday at Coors Field.

As for how much of that can be attributed to the extreme offensive environment of the Mile High City, or whether it could still impact Ryan’s standing in a potential playoff rotation at this point? That’s up to the Twins to determine in the coming days -- though it seems like they’ll chalk this up to a Coors-fueled anomaly.

• Games remaining (2): at COL (2)
• Standings update: The Twins (86-74) have clinched the American League Central and are locked into the AL’s No. 3 seed, meaning they will host a best-of-three Wild Card Series vs. the final Wild Card entrant starting on Oct. 3.

“Honestly, I’m just going to look at it as a wash and not really put too much into it,” Ryan said. “Not playing here again for two years, and there’s [only] a small chance I pitch then, too, so I don’t really care about it.”

With a better outing, Ryan had a chance to further cement this pitching staff in the club’s record books. He entered the game with 191 strikeouts for the season, needing only nine more to make the 2023 Twins only the second staff in club history to boast multiple 200-strikeout pitchers, alongside the 1967 team, which had three (Dean Chance, Jim Kaat, Dave Boswell).

“That was pretty much the goal today,” Ryan said. “I feel like I can be a little selfish with that, with where we’re at. Had the opportunities. I think with a normal fastball, [I] probably would have gotten there.”

But Ryan couldn’t quite find the swing-and-miss stuff to join Pablo López (234 strikeouts) in the club, finishing with six strikeouts to finish the campaign at a career-best 197 despite having missed three starts with the groin injury that caused him to become much more homer-prone in a seven-start stretch from late June to early August.

“Pretty amazing that he's missed the time he's missed and he's struck out that many guys,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “It's not the end-all-be-all; it doesn't tell you everything. But that tells you something.”

On Friday, Ryan allowed two blasts on his fastball to Elehuris Montero and Alan Trejo and another on his sweeper to Brendan Rodgers, his most since he allowed five to the Cardinals on Aug. 2, his final outing before he went on the IL with that groin injury.

Ryan was more confused than anything about the different movement of his pitches in the thin air on Friday. With the division already clinched, he felt fine acknowledging that in the dugout -- and Baldelli indicated that this outing likely wouldn’t carry as heavy of weight as the rest of Ryan’s body of work in determining what comes next.

“Well, you factor it in,” Baldelli said. “You factor in everything that you see. It’s not probably an outing that you’re going to put most of your stock in or it’s not going to be the heaviest outing when you’re kind of weighing everything. But it’s just one, is what it is. We’ll continue to kind of line things up and think about everything.”

As things currently stand, Ryan would be lined up to pitch a possible Game 3 in the Wild Card Series on five days’ rest. That would be the simplest path.

But if the Twins so desire, they could also have Kenta Maeda ready for a possible Game 3 start, since they kept him stretched out with 62 pitches in 3 1/3 innings during his relief appearance on Thursday in Minneapolis. That could also depend on whether the Twins need to call upon Maeda in a more conventional relief role in Games 1 or 2.

Whatever the case, Ryan felt physically strong and encouraged by his finish -- and he’s already looking ahead to that postseason outing.

“In the back of my mind, I was like, ‘This isn’t the last one,’” Ryan said. “Postseason ones count in my book. We earned it. I think it’s huge. Everyone is in a good headspace right now. Just take care of our bodies and keep playing good baseball.”