It's hard to imagine a bunch that needs a break from baseball right now more than the Twins. Well, unless it's their fans.
A disgruntled majority of the announced 27,100 at Target Field loudly expressed their displeasure with the home team several times Sunday, and with good reason. The Twins' 15-2 loss to Baltimore, their most lopsided blowout in Target Field since 2018, left them staggering into the All-Star break with a losing record (45-46) and in second place.
Off a sobering sweep by the Orioles, too, the first time that's happened in the Twin Cities since 2011. By beating the Twins for the fourth time in eight days, Baltimore won the season series for the first time since 2016, four games to two, and scored as many runs in Sunday's finale as the Twins managed in the six meetings combined.
Yet their manager was optimistic, almost defiantly so, after watching his team score fewer than three runs for the fifth time in those six games with the Orioles.
"I couldn't believe in our team any more. I don't know any other way to say that," Rocco Baldelli said. "We have a lot of, not just ability, but character and leadership. All the things we want as a staff and as a manager in a roster, we have it. So we should go out there and win."
Winning will require more hitting, for sure. The Twins managed only four hits Sunday, made 17 consecutive outs at one point, and went 0-for-6 with runners in scoring position, bringing them to 1-for-23 in this weekend's series and 5-for-40 against Baltimore this year.
That made things easy for Orioles starter Kyle Gibson, the longtime Twins pitcher whose 33rd career victory at Target Field tied José Berríos for most in the ballpark's history. Gibson tied his career high with 11 strikeouts over seven innings, and gave up only two runs, both of them driven in by Edouard Julien. The rookie doubled home Carlos Correa in the first inning, giving the Twins a brief lead, and hit a solo home run in the sixth, when the game was long since decided.
Forget about it, Baldelli instructed.
"We squeezed a lot of rough play out of the tube on the last day before the break," he said. "The only way to handle [it is to] decompress. Take a few deep breaths. It might be the best thing for some of our guys who need it right now. But we put ourselves in position where we can still go out there, play some good baseball and accomplish everything we want to accomplish."
And not just the hitters. For a change — though not exactly for the better — hitting was hardly the Twins' biggest problem this time. Instead, their lack of bullpen depth behind Jhoan Duran and Griffin Jax was exposed, exploited and, well, exploded.
Joe Ryan struck out 10 of the first 15 hitters he faced, though home runs by Austin Hays and Ramón Urías put the Twins in a hole. And when the righthander, who has given up 13 runs in the 13 ⅓ innings he has pitched since his shutout of Boston last month, reached 98 pitches by issuing one-out walks to Adley Rutschman and Anthony Santander in the fifth inning, he was removed.
Chaos ensued.
BOXSCORE: Baltimore 15, Twins 2
Jovani Moran faced four batters, and three of them scored, the last on Aaron Hicks' 409-foot blast high into the right-field seats. Emilio Pagán relieved him, and though he surrendered a triple to Jordan Westburg, Pagán ended the seven-run inning with no more damage.
Cole Sands was handed the sixth inning, and the boos grew loud when he allowed six of seven batters to reach base, including back-to-back cannon-shot home runs by Rutschman and Santander. Sands was charged with six runs when Jordan Balazovic entered and gave up a pair of run-scoring singles. A couple innings later, Santander connected again, this time off Balazovic, just to add to the Twins' misery.
"No doors are closed right now, which is a silver lining, even after a game like today," Baldelli said. "We take this All-Star break, [then] come back, recharged, refreshed, kind of bright with some energy and ready to go."
