September 26, 2022

Twins end 5-game losing streak, but fail to start winning streak

The Twins may have snapped their five-game losing streak, but they went right back to their losing ways with another defeat to the Los Angeles Angels, 10-3, on Sunday. The Twins also dropped the weekend series to the Halos and the season series as well.

Starter Dylan Bundy did nothing special, although he wasn’t helped by two errors behind him, and reliever Trevor Megill was terrible, serving up five runs on six hits to end the game. In between, however, the Twins got a very encouraging performance from rookie Ronny Henriquez, who pitched four-plus scoreless innings with a walk and four strikeouts.

The Twins could score only three runs on 11 hits, which once again speaks to their lack of situational or clutch hitting. Describe it any way you want but it amounts to this: They went 2-for-12 with runners in scoring position and left 10 men on base.

Bailey Ober gets the ball Tuesday against the visiting White Sox.

Extra innings…

-The Twins are 74-79.

-The Twins have publicly announced that Rocco Baldelli will continue to be the team’s manager. Well, I’ll just say this: the season isn’t over yet. The Twins are now 7-17 in September and five games under .500 after leading the division for much of the summer. And as they continue to lose, I wonder, and perhaps the front office is wondering: Are the Twins playing as hard for Baldelli as say the Royals are playing for manager Mike Matheny?

There doesn’t seem to be any quit in the 90-loss Royals. They recently swept the Twins and then made the Seattle Mariners miserable on Sunday after they rallied from an 11-2 deficit with an 11-run sixth inning to beat the M’s 13-12. The Baltimore Orioles now trail the M’s by four games for that final wild card spot.

-For the seventh time in eight seasons, Byron Buxton, who is having season-ending knee surgery, has played in fewer than 100 games. This season he played in 92 games.

-On Sept. 25, 1965, the Twins’ Mudcat Grant one-hit the Washington Senators for a 5-0 shutout win at D.C. Stadium. Grant allowed one hit over nine innings with two walks and seven strikeouts to improve to 20-6 on the season, according to Baseball-Reference.com. Twins shortstop Zoilo Versalles, who would win the AL MVP award in 1965, had a 4-for-5 day at the plate, including a home run and triple.

-And then there was this…

-I remember it well.

COMMENTS

Hi, I’m Rolf Boone, Twins fan.

I became a fan of the Minnesota Twins after a friendly wager in the early 1980s. I survived Ron Davis, the meltdown in Cleveland, Phil Bradley at the Kingdome and then marveled at a rising generation of stars and two World Series wins in 1987 and 1991. Brad Radke made the 1990s bearable, while Kirby Puckett’s eye injury, exit from the game and eventual death made it almost too much to bear. The new century ushered in more talent — Joe Mauer, Johan Santana, Joe Nathan, Torii Hunter, Justin Morneau — and consecutive seasons of playoff baseball, followed by consecutive seasons of losing baseball. A winning season returned in 2015. So here we are. Go Twins.