MINNEAPOLIS \u2014 The same story that played out far too often for the Minnesota Twins down the stretch emerged once again Sunday afternoon. Faced with another important contest, the Twins produced a total dud.<\/p>\n
Looking to win a rubber match to keep their fledgling postseason dreams alive, the Twins turned in a lackluster performance in a 9-2 rout by the Cleveland Guardians in front of 17,676 at Target Field.<\/p>\n
Joe Ryan struggled, Tanner Bibee had Twins hitters spellbound, and the Guardians (76-74) extended their lead over the Twins (70-79) in the American League wild-card race to 5 1\/2 games with two weeks to play.<\/p>\n
The poor effort was the latest from a squad that mostly limped throughout a critical 15-game stretch against AL Central opponents that manager Derek Shelton identified as a sprint. During that period, the Twins went 6-9 and lost all three rubber matches they played.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not playing good baseball when it matters, especially down the stretch where it\u2019s been extremely important games,\u201d catcher Ryan Jeffers said. \u201cWe just haven\u2019t gone out there and done our jobs, and it\u2019s simple as that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Six weeks ago, the Twins felt pretty good about their chances.<\/p>\n
Though they sat a game under .500, the Twins were optimistic after the front office bolstered the roster by adding much-needed pitching depth at the trade deadline.<\/p>\n
But within 24 hours of adding Jeff Hoffman, A.J. Minter and Dean Kremer, Sunday\u2019s starter, Ryan, struggled again on the road against the Kansas City Royals, a poor outing that led to him being placed on the injured list with a mild left glute strain. Suddenly, a club already minus Pablo L\u00f3pez and Ryan\u2019s fellow All-Star, Byron Buxton, was missing all three of its top performers.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s when the Twins began to sink, though the ship deteriorated far more over these past three weeks than at first.<\/p>\n
The Twins are 14-22 since the Aug. 3 deadline and have proven incapable of taking advantage of a wide-open race for the third wild-card spot.<\/p>\n
Sunday\u2019s loss looked eerily similar to defeats on Sept. 2 in 12 innings against the Detroit Tigers, Sept. 6 against the Chicago White Sox and Wednesday in Detroit.<\/p>\n
In all three cases, the Twins simply didn\u2019t show up when it mattered.<\/p>\n
On Sept. 2, the Twins rallied from a big early deficit against the Tigers but failed to capitalize on three prime scoring opportunities before Detroit finally blew them away late to avert a series sweep. Four days later, the Twins showed minimal signs of life in a 10-1 loss in Chicago, where they were vying for a series victory.<\/p>\n
They followed those efforts with a nothing burger Wednesday in a rubber match that Detroit won 7-2.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve put ourselves multiple times in a chance to win a series and we have not been able to complete it for one reason or another, and that\u2019s definitely frustrating,\u201d Shelton said.<\/p>\n
Ryan, who made his second start Sunday since coming off the IL, thinks his absence played a big role in the Twins\u2019 demise.<\/p>\n
After showing signs of sharpness Monday in Detroit, Ryan never settled in Sunday, and Cleveland took advantage.<\/p>\n
Steven Kwan blasted the second pitch of the game for a solo homer. Jo Adell tagged Ryan for a solo homer in the third.<\/p>\n
After stranding five runners in the first and second innings, Ryan gave up an RBI double to Kwan and Travis Bazzana singled in a runner in the fourth to make it 4-1.<\/p>\n
Ryan allowed four earned runs and seven hits over four innings. He\u2019s 0-5 with an 8.49 ERA and 22 strikeouts in 23 1\/3 innings since the All-Star break.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been frustrated with myself just not being able to be out there,\u201d Ryan said of his absence. \u201cI think if I\u2019m out there, it\u2019s probably a little bit different of a situation right now. It\u2019s definitely hard watching and not being able to go do my job. \u2026 In a lot of ways, there are a lot of positives. Obviously, there is stuff we can improve on. The offense has been so good all year. We can\u2019t just rely on them the entire time to carry everything throughout a season.\u201d<\/p>\n
With 13 games left, Twins players definitely can see the writing on the wall.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt doesn\u2019t feel like we\u2019re far, but we\u2019re far enough where we\u2019re not in the conversation,\u201d Jeffers said. \u201cIt\u2019s easy to sit here and look at the stretch we went through, understanding going into that stretch how important that 2 1\/2 weeks were, and then to come out and win, what, (six) games? That\u2019s not the job we had to do, and here we are.\u201d<\/p>\n
Here are several more notes after the Twins were unofficially eliminated Sunday.<\/p>\n
\u2014 A disappointing second half for Royce Lewis got a little worse Sunday when the infielder exited with left shoulder soreness. Shelton said Lewis is day to day after he injured himself twice during the fourth inning.<\/p>\n
Lewis, who carried a .684 second-half OPS into Sunday\u2019s game, first potentially dinged himself in the fourth inning after diving to tag first base on a close play on a groundball to his right. Then in the bottom half of the inning, he may have tweaked his shoulder earlier in an at-bat that resulted in a fly out to right field, Shelton said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll kind of see how he is (Monday),\u201d Shelton said.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Rookie shortstop Kaelen Culpepper was sore but in good spirits on Sunday morning after he was struck by a pitch on the back of his right shoulder in Saturday\u2019s victory. X-rays revealed no fracture, but Culpepper suggested Sunday he\u2019d been more concerned about potential nerve damage than a broken bone, though his fears there were also relieved.<\/p>\n
With Culpepper still out of sorts, the Twins opted to rest him Saturday. Culpepper said he initially couldn\u2019t catch his breath.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was in excruciating pain,\u201d he said. \u201cEspecially once I stood up and started walking. I felt like the adrenaline started wearing off a little bit and I started feeling it. Yeah, I was just hurting, you know what I mean? I couldn\u2019t continue walking because I\u2019m like, \u2018I need to take a second to gather myself.\u2019 I know I was trying to get the game to keep going, but at the same time, I needed to give it a minute.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MINNEAPOLIS \u2014 The same story that played out far too often for the Minnesota Twins down the stretch…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":891804,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,2364,591,85],"class_list":["post-891803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-minnesota-twins","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=891803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/891804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=891803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=891803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=891803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}