CHICAGO -- Josh Donaldson tried to call the Twins to action in a team meeting over the weekend. He tried to energize them by taking a dig at Lucas Giolito and basking in the controversy that followed. He tried to jolt the club in the right direction with a homer and emphatic bat drop to start Wednesday’s game amid a chorus of South Side boos.
His call went unanswered.
All of the buildup for this Twins-White Sox matchup -- the makings of a Minnesota hot streak, the barbs thrown back and forth in the media, the acknowledgment of a do-or-die stretch for the Twins -- collapsed in a dull thud this week at Guaranteed Rate Field, mostly because, for as much as Donaldson can do for this team, he can’t solve its pitching problems.
That much was evident again in an 8-5 loss on Thursday that sealed a three-game sweep at the hands of the first-place White Sox.
"We gave it everything we had,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “We just clearly didn't have enough this series for these guys. It was a rough trip in here."
Flush in the middle of a stretch of 24 consecutive games against division opponents, the Twins had, once again, shown encouraging signs of momentum with seven wins in nine games entering the Chicago series -- the first of several opportunities in the coming weeks to force themselves back into striking distance of contention.
Instead, they dropped all three -- including a blowout 13-3 loss on Wednesday after the Donaldson-Giolito spat had reached its climax -- falling to 14 1/2 games out of first place in the division and leaving less and less doubt as to this team’s presumed seller status at the upcoming July 30 Trade Deadline.
The Twins are now 1-8 against the White Sox this season -- and Baldelli said the Twins aren’t even at a point where they can start looking at that gap.
“Our goal needs to be -- we need to start winning games,” Baldelli said. “We need to find a way to get to .500 before we start focusing on individual teams and where we're at in the standings. We have some work to do before we get to that point."
Simply put, this series showed that the Twins don’t have the pitching power to close the gap in the division. Opening Day starter Kenta Maeda showed another downtick in velocity as he allowed seven runs in 4 2/3 innings in Tuesday’s opener, while Matt Shoemaker -- one of four big league pitchers added in free agency -- allowed eight runs in relief on Wednesday before he was designated for assignment at the conclusion of a short and unsuccessful Twins tenure.
And even behind José Berríos, their most consistent starter with a career-long track record of success against Chicago, Minnesota couldn’t right the ship, as the right-hander allowed 10 hits through five innings -- without a strikeout. In fact, the Twins didn’t collect their first strikeout of Thursday’s game until Hansel Robles got Gavin Sheets swinging in the seventh -- 34 batters into the game.
"They had excellent at-bats,” Baldelli said. “They stayed very disciplined in their approach, regardless of what we threw at them. We went out there today -- I don't know how many pitches we threw or how many swings and misses total the entire game we had, but we threw a lot of pitches and didn't miss too many bats.”
With Berríos’ four runs allowed (three earned) through those five frames, Twins starters have now posted a 9.60 ERA in their nine matchups against the White Sox this season. It’s no wonder, then, that Minnesota has now allowed 76 runs to Chicago in 2021 -- an average of nearly eight and a half runs per game. The White Sox have outscored the Twins by 39 combined runs in those matchups.
That’s not good enough to make the splash that the Twins hoped to make this season -- and it sounds like they’re starting to come to terms with that.
“I don't know if we have the ability to have more series like this one and still think that we're going to look up and be looking at opportunities, and be looking at a chance to play in the postseason or anything like that,” Baldelli said. “I think we have to focus on other things this series coming up, because I think we are pretty far away from those other things at this moment.”