After a 10-game road series in which the Twins went toe-to-toe with the Seattle Mariners in the ninth inning and beyond, followed by plenty of run-scoring wins against the West Sacramento A’s, or whatever you want to call them, it seemed the Twins were poised to keep on winning now that they were back at Target Field.
Instead, the Twins have failed to secure leads, resulting in two straight losses to the Toronto Blue Jays and three overall.
Starter Chris Paddack on Saturday limited the Jays to two runs across six innings and gave the Twins a chance to rally from a 2-0 deficit and take a 3-2 lead.
But then the normally reliable Twins bullpen gave it all back in the form of three runs.
Reliever Griffin Jax served up a two-run dinger, and in the process was tagged with the loss and blown save, his fourth. Closer Jhoan Duran also coughed up one more run in the 5-4 loss.
In Friday’s loss, the Twins raced out to a 3-0 lead and then couldn’t hold it because starter Bailey Ober allowed five runs on five hits, including two home runs, across seven innings. The Twins added a run late, but so did the Jays in the 6-4 win.
The Twins try to avoid the sweep on Sunday. Joe Ryan gets the ball.
Extra innings…
–The Twins earned a series win over the A’s, outscoring them 26-8 in the three wins.
–The Twins are 34-30, which is still good enough for second place in the division, but they are now seven games behind the Tigers, who have a major league-leading 42 wins.
–Twins Territory can’t be happy: Nearly 30,000 fans showed up for Friday’s game, followed by more than 20,000 customers on Saturday, and both games were losses. The Twins still rank 12th out of 15 AL teams in attendance, according to Baseball-Reference.com.
–Is Paddack now viewed as the No. 2 starter on the team? With Pablo Lopez out and Ober faltering, doesn’t that make Joe Ryan the clear No. 1 with Paddack right behind him?