MINNEAPOLIS — Ryan Jeffers was forward within the depend when he bought the sinker he was in search of down the center of the plate, took his greatest swing after having felt nice with all of it night time and lofted a lazy fly ball to middle subject. He gazed at it and slammed down his bat in frustration.
That nearly sums it up for the state of Minnesota's offense, as not even the last-place Marlins introduced the Twins any solutions for the questions which have buried them prior to now month as a part of this disheartening collapse out of the playoff image. Instead, the frustration might need hit a crucial level as a part of a 4-1 loss to Miami at Target Field on Tuesday.
The loss very nicely might have been a crucial level for the season, too. It dropped them two video games behind the Royals for the AL’s third and ultimate Wild Card spot with solely 5 extra to play. The defeat was the Twins’ eighth of their previous 11 video games and their twenty third of their previous 34 video games.
Urgency is a given at this level, but won't be sufficient with time working dangerously low. And what had lengthy been a unified message of forgetting about right this moment and focusing on tomorrow was totally different after the sport when Carlos Correa was requested if he felt urgency round him.
“Some guys, yeah,” Correa mentioned. “Some of us hit extra today and tried to figure something out. We didn't get the win, but we've got to do more of that and eventually find something right away so we can go out there and put up more runs.”
When requested to make clear his cryptic reference to “some guys,” and whether or not that meant Correa wished to see extra from others, he didn’t elaborate and famous that “we’re all trying our best, and everybody wants to be in the playoffs.” But he maybe supplied a clue on the finish of a later reply concerning the workforce taking its frustration as gas.
“Some guys take it as poison and a few guys take it as gas,” Correa mentioned. “The guys who take it as fuel are the ones that always come out on top and have a beautiful career and stay in the game for a long time. We have a lot of young guys and a lot of people try to help them, but at the end of the day, everybody has to figure it out on their own.”
This Twins' offense is as shut to full energy as it should ever be following the returns of Correa and Byron Buxton from harm, with each instantly hitting nicely. On paper, they shouldn't be struggling this tough to rating runs, having surpassed 4 runs solely as soon as in 11 video games since a 6-4 win over the Angels on Sept. 11, and solely as soon as in one other 12-game stretch simply earlier than that.
The elements simply haven’t added up. And when the Twins fell behind after a four-run Miami second inning, the offense once more couldn’t discover a manner, stranding 10 runners.
“It’s not a lack of opportunities,” Jeffers mentioned. “We’re just unable to capitalize on any opportunities that have presented.”
Manager Rocco Baldelli posited that the Twins bought too swing-happy for a lot of their 11-23 skid since Aug. 18, and spoke concerning the want for the hitters to focus on a selected a part of the strike zone and go to the plate with extra of a plan.
“We’ve been in swing mode where we’re just swinging at a lot, things we shouldn’t be swinging at, and not as concise of a plan and approach as we need to have,” Baldelli mentioned. “We need to tighten it up as much as possible in these last five games.”
But that has been the chorus for a lot of this skid, with out an uptick to present for it. And whereas it’s true that younger gamers like Royce Lewis and Jose Miranda have been outstanding within the struggles, it’s additionally true that Trevor Larnach and Matt Wallner — the latter misplaced to indirect tightness within the sixth inning — have been the workforce’s solely above-average regulars in that point.
So now, with their backs against the wall, maybe frustration simply turns to hope that one thing will change.
“We put ourselves in a situation where we’re no longer in the driver’s seat,” Jeffers mentioned. “You hope, in those situations, that we’re going out there and we play winning baseball, we scratch together some wins.”
