KANSAS CITY, MO. – A few minutes after Twins manager Rocco Baldelli aired out his frustration with his team in a loud closed-door meeting, following a 2-0 loss to the Kansas City Royals on Sunday, he declined to take questions during a postgame news conference.
Rocco Baldelli blasts Twins for ‘unprofessional series’ after shutout loss to Royals
Jose Miranda was thrown out at home in the first inning for the Twins, who didn’t have another runner reach third base during a 2-0 loss at Kansas City. Minnesota was swept in the three-game series.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
September 9, 2024 at 4:21AM
“That was an unprofessional series of baseball that we just played, and that’s my only comment for the day,” Baldelli said. “I’m not commenting on anything else. I don’t think anything else really has to be said.”
The Twins, swept in their three-game series at Kauffman Stadium, totaled two runs in 27 innings. There weren’t many run-scoring opportunities throughout their miserable road trip, which concluded with a 2-5 record, and they wasted their best one in the first inning Sunday.
With Jose Miranda on first base, Trevor Larnach drove a double to the right-field wall. Miranda received an overaggressive wave from third base coach Tommy Watkins, and he was thrown out at the plate by about 10 feet. The Twins left two runners on base when Royce Lewis struck out to end the first inning, and they didn’t have another runner touch second base until there were two outs in the ninth inning.
The Twins sit 2½ games behind the Royals for the second wild card, five games behind AL Central leader Cleveland and 3½ games ahead of Seattle and Detroit for the third and final wild card with 19 games remaining.
“A team becomes a team in this situation,” rookie pitcher Simeon Woods Richardson said.
During the Twins’ worst stretch of the season, losing 14 of 20 games, their offense has deserted them. They were shut out twice in three games by the Royals. In the past two weeks, they’ve scored 37 runs, the lowest in the majors.
Injuries to Carlos Correa, Byron Buxton and Max Kepler impacted the offense, but it’s a team-wide slump. Baldelli previously said he thought they became “a little swing happy at certain times,” and they struck out 30 times in their Royals series.
Lewis went 4-for-25 on the road trip with one extra-base hit. Willi Castro, an All-Star and sparkplug for most of the season, had one hit in 18 at-bats. Ryan Jeffers and Brooks Lee, two more lineup regulars, totaled a combined six hits in 40 at-bats.
Edouard Julien slammed his bat after he struck out in the ninth inning Sunday.
“In August, I think we were playing pretty well,” Baldelli said Saturday. “We were kind of rolling a little bit offensively, and it’s not a much different group than we have right now. Buck was available for some of that, but it’s basically the same group.”
After Baldelli delivered a loud postgame message to the group, reiterating they played an unprofessional series, it was a silent locker room outside of one hushed conversation between two players about hitting approaches.
“There are a lot of different ways you can interpret unprofessional,” Jeffers said. “I think it goes back to not us giving up, but not having a sense of urgency that’s needed to win baseball games like that, the fire that needs to be under you to win a game like that.”
The Royals loaded the bases with no outs in the fifth inning, which included an infield single after two failed attempts at a sacrifice bunt. Garrett Hampson drove in a run with a sacrifice fly, and reliever Cole Sands had tough luck when Salvador Perez hit an RBI single on a dribbler down the third base line that refused to roll foul.
“We’ve just got to find a way,” Jeffers said. “You look at how they scored their runs today. It’s a walk, a little dink through the infield, another walk and then a little dribbler. It’s just putting together scrappy [at-bats], trying to find a better way to win a ballgame. Yeah, a homer would be great. Doubles in the gap are great. But you have to win ballgames different ways.”
The Twins begin a six-game homestand Monday against two sub-.500 teams, the Los Angeles Angels and Cincinnati Reds.
“Everyone in here knows we’re in the thick of a race,” Jeffers said. “We can go anywhere from dropping out of the wild card to winning a division. There are many different ways that we can go. ... I don’t think losing these games puts any more [pressure] on us. It just puts the emphasis on figuring out a way to play better baseball.”
Twins shortstop Carlos Correa is arguably their best player and easily their most expensive one. He’s frequently injured and a payroll-strapped team is up for sale. It feels like the Twins can’t afford to keep Correa, but the same is true of losing him.
