MINNEAPOLIS -- As they attempt to stay afloat in a crowded Wild Card race without their best player or their two best pitchers, the Twins can see that an opportunity they worked months for is threatening to get away from them. But they’re not conceding that it’s gone yet.
Minnesota lost for the seventh time in eight games and 10th in 14 on Saturday, 3-2, to the White Sox at Target Field to fall 8 1/2 games behind Chicago in the American League Central and four behind Cleveland in the Wild Card race. Perhaps more daunting, there are four teams between the Twins and Guardians, dramatically increasing the difficulty in gaining ground.
As September approaches, it’s now or never to get hot and get back in the thick of the race. The hope was that a hot streak would begin with this series against the division-leading Sox, but Saturday’s defeat ensured a third consecutive series loss.
“I don’t think we’re thinking about one game,” said Josh Bell, who was 1-for-3 with a sacrifice fly. “I think we know we have to get hot. Definitely want to be the team going into the postseason that’s the hot one. Ten, 12 games in a row, something like that, would be awesome. It starts with tomorrow. Hopefully, we get things going back in the right direction. All it starts with is one game.”
Bailey Ober turned in five effective innings before handing it over to a Twins bullpen that mostly pitched well. Andrew Benintendi, who had all three White Sox hits in the game, drilled an Andrew Morris pitch that was well out of the strike zone for the go-ahead run, but that was the only run against the Minnesota relief corps despite four walks.
It was on the offensive side that the Twins scuffled again, searching for baserunners and not doing enough with them when they did get them. They were unable to convert a one-out double into a run in the fifth, and they also missed a chance with two on and one out in the sixth.
It was in that moment that the team’s roster crunch perhaps proved costly. With Byron Buxton unavailable, meaning Minnesota had only three available players on its bench, manager Derek Shelton elected to let Trevor Larnach hit lefty-lefty against Sean Newcomb. He and Kaelen Culpepper both popped out, and the Twins’ last serious threat was gone.
A team that has come back so often this season was unable to do so against the Chicago bullpen, and the second of six games in 10 days against the division leaders went by the wayside.
"Obviously, it's not going the way we want it to right now,” Ober said. “But it's up to us, so we need to pick it back up and attack each day we're out there."
Player after player reiterated that heads are not down in the clubhouse, and the mindset remains confident and forward-facing rather than ruminating on what has gone wrong. But there’s no doubt that the time to turn things around has already arrived.
“Obviously, we had a big series coming in here with the Sox, and both games didn’t go our way,” said Kody Clemens, who went 0-for-3 with a walk. “But yeah, the vibes in here are completely fine. Obviously, it’s frustrating right now, given the game we just finished, but we’ve just got to continue to grind and get back to winning ball games.”