The final narrative about a season tends to be linear, with the more recent events highlighted while the rest fades into the background.
Twins were cooked well before the weekend sweep by Cleveland
The Twins are fading fast in the AL Central race after being swept over the weekend. But their grip on the division started slipping months ago with a series of bullpen meltdowns.
September 13, 2022 at 1:29PM
In that type of construction, it will be tempting to remember the 2022 Twins as a team that ran into a lot of bad injury luck and simply ran out of gas at the end of the season.
They enter Tuesday 69-70, five games behind Cleveland (and two back of the White Sox) with just 23 games left. Barring some sort of torrid final few weeks, it feels as though the sweep at the hands of Cleveland this past weekend will get top billing as the thing that finally did them in.
That's fine, and it's certainly true that there still existed a reasonable chance to reach the postseason before that series began (as opposed to now, with their odds down below 6%). There's even the convenient symmetry of the Twins falling below .500 just as the Vikings were opening their season with a huge win.
But before we quickly move on, as so often happens in sports, let's take a brief look back. As I noted on Tuesday's Daily Delivery podcast, the biggest regret of this season for the Twins came in late June with five excruciating losses to Cleveland in a 10-day span.
Avert your eyes if you are squeamish.
- June 21: The Twins led 5-3 in the eighth inning at Target Field before a Franmil Reyes homer off Emilio Pagan tied the game 5-5. Cleveland won 6-5 in 11 innings.
- June 22: The Twins led 10-7 going into the ninth, but Cleveland rallied for four runs off Pagan and Griffin Jax for an 11-10 win.
- June 28: The Twins led 2-1 going in the eighth in Cleveland, but Pagan allowed a two-run single and the Guardians won 3-2.
- June 29: The Twins led 6-3 after scoring three runs in the top of the 10th, but Cleveland rallied for four in the bottom half off Pagan and Jharel Cotton for a 7-6 walkoff win.
- June 30: The Twins led 3-1 going into the bottom of the eighth but Cleveland scored two in the eighth and two in the ninth off Tyler Thornburg for a 5-3 walkoff win.
The Central was so bad that the Twins still led the division after that. They even expanded their lead in early July. It seemed for a little while like those losses might not matter.
But in the end that was a missed chance — five to be exact — to take control of the race and perhaps the biggest regret of this season.
When he was hired after the disastrous 2016 season to reshape the Twins, Derek Falvey brought a reputation for identifying and developing pitching talent. It took a while, but the pipeline we were promised is now materializing.
