The Twins have been outscored 46-16 over their last four games — all losses, of course — including Monday’s 11-2 defeat to the M’s in Game 1 of a four-game series.
The problem begins with starting pitching. With Pablo Lopez and Daniel Zebulon Matthews sidelined by injuries, the Twins have had to rely on a combination of Bailey Ober, Chris Paddack, David Festa and Joe Ryan, and outside of Ryan, no one is pitching particularly well.
Ober got the ball on Monday and produced another mediocre effort, serving up seven runs on seven hits, including three home runs, across seven innings with no walks and seven strikeouts.
The “no walks and seven strikeouts” were encouraging, but the seven-run deficit was too much because the offense fell to earth a day after scoring eight runs on 18 hits. The Twins on Monday had seven hits, but six of them were produced by three players: Carlos Correa, Trevor Larnach and Brooks Lee. The two runs were the result of back-to-back solo shots hit by Larnach and Correa.
Chris Paddack gets the ball on Tuesday.
Extra innings…
–The current four-game losing streak started with a three-game sweep at home, no less, at the hands of the Milwaukee Brewers, including the Brew Crew’s 9-8 win on Sunday.
The Twins went with an “opener” to start Sunday’s game, which meant that reliever Danny Coulombe got the ball in the first inning, but the plan backfired because Coulombe allowed a run on two hits and then starter Festa was terrible.
Festa served up eight runs on 12 hits, including two dingers, with three walks across four-plus innings. The Brewers had no trouble with the Slim Reaper. In fact, I’m not even sure that nickname works anymore. Slim, yes, but Reaper? Who are we kidding?
–The last time the Twins were swept by the Brewers at home? The 1996 season, according to radio play-by-play voice Kris Atteberry. A check of Baseball-Reference.com shows the Twins lost 12-1, 7-3, 4-2 and 3-2 in May of that season, and what a terrible season it was because Kirby Puckett was forced to leave the game because of an eye injury.
–At least we have Byron Buxton, who hit two more dingers on Sunday to give him 17 on the season.
–The Twins are 37-41 and 1-9 in their last 10 games. They also are 11.5 games back of the division-leading Detroit Tigers. One more problem: The Twins can beat up on the weakest teams in baseball but against those with winning records they are a dismal 17-29. You can’t play the White Sox all the time, you know?