‘This will bother me forever’: Inside the Twins clubhouse after late-season collapse

When the Twins trailed Baltimore by seven runs in the eighth inning Friday, there were several players who wore expressionless looks across their faces as they stared ahead in the dugout.

The Twins completed one of Major League Baseball’s worst late-season collapses this century. In six weeks, they went from a team with 90% playoff odds to a team that finished fourth in the American League Central.

“This will bother me forever,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. “There will be no way around that. I will think about it a lot and I will use it to motivate myself in a lot of different ways going forward, because I never want to experience that again.”

It’s an embarrassment worn at all levels of the organization. Ownership cut payroll by more than $30 million after the Twins advanced to the AL Division Series in last year’s playoffs. The front office whiffed on many of its additions and failed to bolster the roster at the trade deadline.

Inside the Twins clubhouse, multiple players said they will need time to digest what went wrong. After they moved a season-high 17 games above .500, they won only 12 of their next 37 games. With their playoff hopes on the line in the last week of the season, the Twins dropped two of three games to a 100-loss Miami Marlins team.

“If you have anybody to blame, blame me for going down for two months and not being a part of the team,” said shortstop Carlos Correa, who missed 51 games because of plantar fasciitis in his right foot. “I think that’s one of the main reasons.”

The blame game extends many places after such a frustrating ending. The Twins entered the season as division favorites. The core of their roster is filled with players who should be in the prime of their careers.

“It’s like every season, right? You don’t win the World Series, and we talk about motivating each other to be better next offseason, next year, but there are only a few guys that actually do it,” Correa said. “The more guys that we can get on board to actually put in the work, to actually take this serious, to actually sacrifice a lot to get better, then we’re going to end up being a better team. If guys just receive the message and they are motivated for the week or two weeks that the message sits with them, then we’re going nowhere.”

Entering Saturday, the Twins produced a .219 batting average and .624 OPS in September while averaging 3.6 runs per game. They hit only two homers in their last nine games before they were mathematically eliminated from the postseason.

The starting rotation featured three rookies and an inconsistent bullpen that pitched the third-most innings in September.

“I think when you rely on a lot of guys that you probably weren’t expecting to for that long, I think for a while there, everyone overachieved, played well and did a very good job,” third baseman Royce Lewis said. “I’m not going to speak on anyone else’s opinions, but my opinion, I think that some guys, myself, I ran out of gas. I’m trying my best. It’s a different grind.”

The Twins were energized by their rookie class last season when they won a division title, ended an 18-game playoff losing streak and won a postseason series for the first time in two decades. This year, many of their young players hit a wall.

“Everybody runs out of gas at the end of the year,” Correa said. “The season is long. The guys that stay resilient and the guys that stay strong mentally are the guys that succeed. We did not do any of those things. Being tired is an excuse that’s not valid at this point because everybody has to go through the same schedule.”

The Twins tried different tactics to stave off their collapse. None of it worked. The only teams that won fewer games in September were the Chicago White Sox, who broke the modern record for losses in a season, and the Los Angeles Angels.

“Whenever we [go] through the whole self-reflection, it’s not only on the field but off the field,” pitcher Pablo López said. “Good, winning teams have stuff that prevent bad stretches like this, what happened for too long. Whenever you have a really, really good clubhouse or whatever, they prevent five-game losing streaks. It might be a three-game losing streak, but you were able to turn things around quicker.”

The Twins fell short of all their expectations as the Detroit Tigers and Kansas City Royals clinched playoff spots Friday.

“Nothing clicked,” veteran infielder Kyle Farmer said. “We were as cold as that iceberg was in ‘Titanic.’ ”