The three-game losing streak is now a four-game skid after the Twins really had nothing going against the Tampa Bay Rays in their 6-1 loss on Saturday.
And it’s too bad because the starting pitching through the first 27 games of the season has been pretty good, including Bailey Ober on Saturday who made a quality start with just two runs allowed across six innings.
But even good pitching deserves a little run support, and that’s something the Twins have struggled to supply — outside of the eight runs on Thursday — in bunches over the four games. The Twins are having no trouble getting on base, it’s just that nothing happens once they’re there.
Over the four games, the Twins are 4-for-29 with runners in scoring position and have left 37 on base. The Twins rank high in the American League in that left-on-base category, according to Baseball-Reference.com. Coming into Saturday’s game, they had stranded 190 runners, good enough (bad enough?) for fourth place, right behind the Astros, the M’s and Angels.
They try again on Sunday. Simeon Woods Richardson gets the ball. This is feeling like a sweep to me.
Extra innings…
–One would think that a 17-1 victory would temporarily hit pause on anyone about to lose their job, but not in Boston. Ownership there fired six coaches on Saturday, including manager Alex Cora. They also said goodbye to the hitting coach, bench coach, third-base coach, an assistant hitting coach and a hitting strategy coach.
This is what happens when expectations are high, and then the season begins with a 10-17 record — a record that is acceptable in most baseball cities (see the Twins), but not in Boston and New York where I’m sure the media and fans were all over the team for its poor start.
Before the bad news, though, the Sox raced out to a 7-1 lead over the Baltimore Orioles and then poured it on with a 10-run 9th inning to blast the Birds, 17-1. The Red Sox rapped out 17 hits, including eight extra-base hits: Four doubles, three dingers and one triple.
–The job is his: Ex-Twin, reliever and the artist formerly known as Louie Varland has been named the closer of the Toronto Blue Jays, replacing Jeff Hoffman in that role. Varland allowed a run in the ninth on Saturday, but he still induced a flyout and fanned two to pick up his second save.