Rocco Baldelli, the manager who cannot be flustered, the players' champion who would never utter a critical word, finally exploded on Thursday.
After the Twins fell to a statistically preposterous 0-7 in extra innings with a 4-3 loss to the Rangers, their manager was asked his opinion of the rule that places a runner on second base to start each inning after the ninth, and he went nuclear.
"I'm starting to sour on it," Baldelli said.
Hey, that's a rant for the Twins' eternal optimist.
But even Wile E. Coyote eventually gets tired of running headlong into brick walls, and Baldelli surely is well beyond weary of somehow staying cheerful after watching the Twins fail over and over in remarkably identical and predictable ways.
"We've had opportunities to win these games. We have to find a way to get it done. We haven't figured that out yet," said Baldelli, whose team is 11-8 in nine-inning games, and 0-11 when games end early (0-4 in seven-inning doubleheaders) or late. "It's almost unbelievable that seven times it's come up already this early in the season, and seven times we have not prevailed."
Four days after Mitch Garver declared that "we know we have to win pretty much every series between now and the All-Star break," the Twins went 1-3 against a Rangers team that arrived in last place and departed with new life. The Twins led midway through all four games of the series, but Texas outscored them 11-1 from the eighth inning on.
So the 8,760 in attendance for the Target Field matinee could be excused if they left a little early, because they knew what was coming. This time, a Tyler Duffy pitch bounced in the dirt, allowing courtesy runner Jonah Heim to move up to third base, and Willie Calhoun clubbed a visor-high pitch over Jorge Polanco's head and into right field to score him.