Lurking beneath the surface of the Twins’ midsummer resurgence, of their swelling confidence and postseason potential, is a troublesome reality that they will have to address over the next 10 weeks.
Brewers sweep Twins with 8-7 victory as bullpen falters, offense can’t catch up
Milwaukee hit four home runs to rally past a Twins team that put runners on but couldn’t take advantage.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
July 22, 2024 at 1:46AM
Though doing so over the next three days wouldn’t be a bad idea, either.
The Twins hit three home runs Sunday, but the Brewers hit four, three of them off the stingy Twins bullpen, and Milwaukee walked away with an 8-7 victory and a sweep of the two-game series at Target Field.
“Two-game series, we lost both of them. And looking in the mirror, we should win both of those games. That’s my opinion,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. “I don’t care, we should have won both of those games.”
But they didn’t, and perhaps that was predictable. The Twins have a big problem this season with the league’s best teams, the sort they will meet in the playoffs if they get there.
Six teams currently own a better record this season than the Twins (54-44), and the best of them, Philadelphia, arrives Monday for a three-game series. The other five? With Milwaukee’s sweep, that quintet has beaten the Twins 14 consecutive times and owns a cumulative 19-2 record against them in 2024.
“If you want to be the best, you’ve got to beat the best. If we want to get where we expect ourselves to get, where we want to be, those are the teams we’re going to be playing,” pitcher Pablo López said. “You’re not going to encounter many situations where you have the luxury of making mistakes. In my case, if I get away with one mistake, I know I’m not going to get away with another one. That sense of urgency always has to be there.”
More success at the plate would help, too. The Twins have been outscored 118-60 in those 21 games and have batted .185 as a team. They managed nine hits and drew seven walks Sunday, but they sabotaged their chances by going 1-for-12 with runners in scoring position, after going 2-for-14 Saturday.
Then again, their bullpen gave up home runs in the seventh, eighth and ninth innings, the first time this year Twins relievers have given up three homers in a game.
“We scored seven runs. That’s plenty of runs to win a game,” Baldelli said. “Coming back off the break, we’ve got to play a complete game at some point. We have to really play better baseball as a team. Execute better, make better pitches, when there’s people on base find a barrel somehow. That will lead to winning more games.”
So will home runs — hitting them. Byron Buxton homered twice, a 411-foot solo shot into the Brewers bullpen in the third inning and a 386-footer down the line in the ninth. Trevor Larnach also connected, putting the Twins in front with a two-run shot to right in the fifth.
But Milwaukee No. 9 hitter Eric Haase also homered twice, and he drove in another run during the Brewers’ three-run fifth by following 20-year-old Jackson Chourio’s two-run double with a hot grounder that got past shortstop Willi Castro for an RBI single.
In the seventh, Jorge Alcala surrendered a 443-foot upper-deck blast to Chourio to tie the score at 5-5. An inning later, Griffin Jax watched Rhys Hoskins hit a two-run homer that appeared headed for the flower gardens atop the left field wall, though a fan in the first row caught it before it landed — or before, the Twins maintained, Austin Martin could make an amazing catch. It was the first homer Jax has given up at home since Sept. 13, 2023.
Haase hit his second home run in the ninth inning off Caleb Thielbar, and that run proved costly when the Twins scored twice in the bottom of the inning.
“We didn’t lose because of bad luck. We lost because we didn’t execute and we didn’t do enough to win,” Baldelli said. “When you play the good teams, you’ve got to play even better. That’s all it is — just play better.”
AT THEIR WORST AGAINST THE BEST
The Twins have lost their past 14 games against the top six teams in baseball, and they have three more coming up with the Phillies coming to town Monday.
Philadelphia (.636 winning percentage): Three-game series starts Monday
Baltimore (.606): Twins 0-3, outscored 22-9, hitting .230 (23-for-100)
Cleveland (.602): Twins 0-5, outscored 26-11, hitting .169 (27-for-160)
L.A. Dodgers (.586): Twins 1-2, outscored 12-8, hitting .167 (15-for-90)
N.Y. Yankees (.584): Twins 0-6, outscored 36-12, hitting .166 (32-for-193)
Milwaukee (.576): Twins 1-3,outscored 22-20, hitting .207 (30-for-145)
Totals: Twins 2-19, outscored 118-60, hitting .185 (127-for-688)
Pablo López had his long scoreless streak end, but he picked up the victory as the teams split the four-game series in St. Petersburg.
