As I have said before, no pitching and no hitting is a deadly combination for a baseball team, and yet that was exactly what was on display Saturday as the Twins lost the game and series to the Cincinnati Reds in blowout fashion, 11-1.
The Twins had no answer on the mound or at the plate, scoring a single run on five crummy hits. Carlos Correa did hit a double in his return to the lineup, but he and Byron Buxton took an early exit after the game got out of hand.
The good news is that the Detroit Tigers also lost on Saturday, so the Twins still have a 2.5 game lead over Motown for the final wild card spot in the American League.
The Twins try to avoid the sweep on Sunday. David Festa gets the ball.
Extra innings…
-The Twins are 78-70. They were 70-53 on Aug. 17.
-Simeon Woods Richardson struggled with his command in the loss, tossing 69 pitches over three innings with three walks and three runs allowed on five hits. Nothing special about that.
-Reliever Louie Varland then entered the game. He secured three outs, but also served up six runs on five hits to send his ERA into the stratosphere at 8.57. I’ve got bad news for Varland: he is not a major league pitcher. The dilemma, of course, is that if he can pitch well in the minors and not the majors, he doesn’t have a whole lot of options, except perhaps to pitch overseas. Japan might work.
-Relievers Scott Blewett and Caleb Thielbar allowed two more runs to give the Reds 11 for the game. Twins infielder Kyle Farmer finally was called on to pitch the ninth and he tossed a scoreless frame on seven pitches. Go figure.
-How about ex-Twin Jose Berrios? He improved to 16-9 with a 3.44 ERA after he allowed one run over seven innings in a 7-2 win over the St. Louis Cardinals on Saturday.
-A little history: On Sept. 16, 1983, the Twins’ Tim Teufel had a 5-for-5 day at the top of the order in an 11-4 beat down of the Toronto Blue Jays.
The Toronto Star
“The night Tim Teufel will remember for the rest of his life happened to double as a night that Jim Gott, Stan Clarke and Don Cooper — pretty well all the Toronto Blue Jays, actually — will do their best to obliterate.
“And speaking of obliterating, Jays wouldn’t much complain if someone put a bomb to the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, where they tend to lose far too regularly to those Minnesota Twins. Last night — ouch — 11-4.
“There were no complaints, of course, from the rookie Teufel (say, tuffle), who, in his 10th major-league appearance, merely went 5-for-5, including his first two major-league home runs, scored five times and set a Minnesota club-record 13 total bases.”
*Of course, I don’t want this to be the end of the road for the Twins in 2024. But the way they are playing, combined with upcoming games against Cleveland, Boston and Baltimore, I just don’t see how they can survive those series and still make the postseason.
Sources: MLB.com, Baseball-Reference.com, Newspapers.com