Another bullpen meltdown means Twins have lost three in a row

SAN DIEGO – The Twins don’t believe in drawing out the drama, in suffering an agonizingly slow defeat. Not this trip, anyway.

Two days after watching a four-run lead disappear in nine pitches, the Twins transformed a two-run lead into a one-run deficit in just 10 pitches Tuesday night. The 10th of those, a Jurickson Profar chip shot that traveled only 353 feet into the left-field stands, handed the Twins their third consecutive loss, 7-5 against the San Diego Padres at Petco Park.

“It just happened very quickly. Again,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. “They put those runs on the board before anything else could play out.”

Steven Okert was the victim this time, and while his blowup wasn’t as jarring as Jorge Alcala’s on Sunday in Texas, even the lefthander marveled at the speed in which the game slipped away from him.

“I know, right? One after the other, just bop-bop-bop. They’ve been hot for a while now, and you see why right there,” Okert said after allowing the Padres to record their 22nd victory in their last 27 games. “Didn’t feel like I was making that bad of pitches. They were just hitting everything.”

He’s talking about former Twins Donovan Solano and Luis Arráez, who led off the eighth inning with back-to-back singles. That brought up Profar, who had struck out three times already. Though he didn’t get a strike from Okert, he didn’t need one.

On a 2-0 count, the switch-hitter golfed a slider under the strike zone and hooked it into the left-field stands, putting the Padres ahead for good and dropping the Twins 3½ games behind the Cleveland Guardians in the American League Central.

“Yeah, it’s tough. It’s hard to have that feeling like we’re in charge, especially in the time of season where every game matters,” said Ryan Jeffers, who hit his team-high 20th home run to give the Twins an early lead against former Twins pitcher Martín Pérez. “As tight as [the standings are], it’s hard to lose two games we could have won.”

Especially to waste Bailey Ober’s 11th consecutive quality start. The righthander retired five hitters to open the game, then gave up a pair of hits. He mowed down the next 13 in a row, then gave up a pair of hits and was removed.

BOXSCORE: San Diego 7, Twins 5

MLB standings

The catch? The first two hits, a Jackson Merrill double and David Peralta single, scored a run. And the last two?

Ouch.

“I throw a great pitch to [Jake] Cronenworth and he breaks his bat and hits a bloop double” that landed along the foul line in short left field, Ober said. Then came Manny Machado, with the crowd of 39,143 roaring.

That roar turned ear-splitting when Machado unloaded on a belt-high cutter, blasting it 433 feet into the Padres’ bullpen and tying a game that Ober seemed in control of until that moment.

“I don’t think his heart rate or mine increased at all” after the bloop double, Jeffers said. But then “came just a bad pitch. Bailey was dialed in the entire game, then made one mistake to a guy who hits pretty well.”

Still, the Twins responded when Royce Lewis, Carlos Santana and Jeffers led off the eighth with consecutive singles, loading the bases. Two batters later, Christian Vázquez singled home two runs, though Jeffers was out trying to reach third base, one of three Twins base runners thrown out Tuesday.

That lead didn’t last long either.

“It’s a tough one to walk off the field with,” Baldelli said. “There’s no one more frustrated than the players when those things don’t work out. Really, it truly just comes down to, they’ve got to go make the pitches they want to make.”