Twins in free fall heading into the final week of the regular season

Though no one realized it at the time, the peak of the Twins’ season arrived five weeks ago, around 3 p.m. on a quiet Sunday afternoon in Arlington, Texas.

The Twins had charged within two games of the American League Central lead, were only another half-game back of having the best record in the American League, and their hold on a wild-card spot was five games wide and growing. With Pablo López having pitched six shutout innings while his teammates built a 4-0 advantage against the Rangers, the Twins were nine outs away from completing a sweep of the defending World Series champions.

“I always say, you’re never as good as you look when everything is going right, and you’re never as bad as when everything goes wrong,” said Derek Falvey, the Twins’ president of baseball operations. “We’ve lived through that first part. Now …” he said, leaving the second part unspoken but understood — because at that moment, chaos struck.

It hasn’t subsided, still.

Jorge Alcalá relieved López, and everything changed, for that game and, oddly, the Twins’ season. Leody Taveras singled on the second pitch he saw, and Marcus Semien and Corey Seager bashed first-pitch doubles. Josh Smith flew out, but Adolis Garcia smacked a long home run.

Nine pitches into the inning, the Twins’ four-run lead was gone. Ten pitches later, Josh Jung’s homer gave Texas the lead, and the Rangers eventually finished off their 6-5 comeback win in 10 innings.

Five weeks and 21 losses in 32 games later, the Twins have plummeted to fourth place in their own division and, with six games remaining in the regular season, they no longer own one of the American League’s six playoff spots.

“It’s been a wild year,” said Twins manager Rocco Baldelli, whose team will take on the last-place Miami Marlins at Target Field for three games beginning Tuesday, then face the playoff-bound Orioles for three games over the weekend. “You have exceptional pitching around the division. If your offense comes in and doesn’t have a real good day, there are a lot of starters and a lot of bullpen arms that can shut you down.”

The Twins are proof of that. Actually, double proof.

Minnesota opened this season in a horrendous slump that made it seem as though they hadn’t attended spring training. They lost 13 of their first 20 games, batted .195 as a team with an embarrassing .609 OPS, and averaged only 3.3 runs per game.

As if building bookends to their season, their starting lineup has almost matched that output in its past 20 games: a .219 average, .621 OPS and a mere 3.4 runs per game.

“It wasn’t easy to go through [in April], but we came out of it. We went on a [12-game] winning streak and showed our true selves,” catcher Ryan Jeffers said last week. “The talent is still there, obviously.”

Yes, but this lull has been almost team-wide, this predicament one of their own making.

Carlos Santana is at .217 for the month, and went 1-for-12 with runners in scoring position on last week’s road trip. Jeffers himself is at .154 this month, Brooks Lee only .143.

José Miranda hasn’t homered since July 5, driving in only seven runs since then. Royce Lewis hasn’t homered since Sept. 1, and has two RBI in the past 20 games.

Ironically, Kyle Farmer, whose batting average was submerged below .200 for five months, is their hottest hitter, going .395 with three homers in September.

“We’re trying to shake it up. We’re going with different approaches, because it’s not always just physical, it’s not always just the swing,” Baldelli said. “It’s having the right approach going into each game, sometimes even when maybe it’s not giving you what you want right away.”

Speaking of right away, the Twins also tend to fall behind quickly; they once ranked third in the league in first-inning runs, but they’ve scored that fast only three times in the past three weeks, and always only one run. They’ve scored first only six times in the past 20 games.

Day after day, it must feel like deva vu, right?

“I don’t think it’s ‘here we go again,’ I really don’t. Of course there’s disappointment,” Baldelli said. “When you’re in a little funk, when you go innings without scoring, there’s only so much to cheer about. We need to lock in and just play the game.”

Especially since, for all the bleakness they have wallowed in for five weeks, the Twins can still turn this around. They are only one game behind Detroit and Kansas City, and they own tiebreakers with both. Even now, analytics site fangraphs.com gives the Twins a 54.1% chance of spraying some champagne later this week.

“It’s in our hands, everyone knows that,” López said. “I look around this clubhouse, and I see a playoff team. We still have an opportunity to show it.”

“You can’t just call [their five-week collapse] random. That wouldn’t be us being honest with ourselves. It’s not random,” Baldelli acknowledged. “What you can do is keep working at it. You can’t just throw your hands in the air and say this might turn. We have to keep working.”