Twins lose to Red Sox 8-1 thanks to bad, bats, bullpen and fielding play

BOSTON – The Twins on Sunday arrived where they ended the 2021 season — in last place. Carlos Correa has been here before, too, which is why he's not concerned.

"This is my eighth season, and it happens every year. There's not one year where the offense doesn't go cold, either at the beginning, middle or end," Correa said, and indeed, almost exactly one year ago, Correa's Astros team fell into last place on April 21. They went on to win the AL West. "That's what happens when you play 162. There are some ups. There are some downs."

This one is pretty far down. Bailey Ober didn't allow an earned run over six innings Sunday, but the Twins lost for the fourth time in five games, 8-1 to the yellow-and-blue-clad Red Sox at Fenway Park.

The Twins offense has mostly fizzled to start the season, as their .187 team batting average, worst in the AL, makes clear. The Twins managed only four hits Sunday, the sixth time in nine games they have been held to five hits or fewer.

"Our offense hasn't got it going yet like it should," Correa said. "But it's going to pick back up. When it picks back up, it's going to be fun again. It's all about not panicking."

Right now, it's about not scoring, too. The Twins have brought home only 15 runs in the past week, eight of them in Friday's victory; they have driven a run across the plate in only nine of their past 53 innings and have four hits in their past 33 at-bats with runners in scoring position.

Correa himself is one of several Twins hitters scuffling along well below their normal production. The prized free-agent signee is hitless in his past 12 at-bats and is batting just .133 on the season. Jorge Polanco is at .200, Miguel Sano .077, and Max Kepler — who singled on Sunday and scored the Twins' lone run on a Trevor Larnach sacrifice fly — a mere .167.

"You can't get overly emotional about it. You have to just keep trying to have good at-bats," manager Rocco Baldelli said. "It's not about one guy getting it done. It's about looking to whoever is coming up next to get the job done, because we're going to need all the guys in the lineup to do that."

What's especially painful is the fact that the Twins feel like they could easily be 6-3 instead of 3-6, with just a timely hit or two missing.

"We've had a chance to win every game. … Even today, we were one big hit away," Correa pointed out of a game that was just 2-1 until the Red Sox piled on six runs off Caleb Thielbar and Cody Stashak in the eighth inning. "The last series [against the Dodgers], we were close all the way into the seventh inning. We lost two one-run games to Seattle. We've always been in the games. It's just that one hit that's been missing. Hopefully we can pick it back up soon."

Ober tried to pick them up, keeping the Red Sox scoreless in the first five innings. But a Sano error at first base to begin the sixth inning triggered a Boston rally that handed Ober his first loss of the season. Xander Bogaerts followed by lining a double off the left-field wall, and a pair of sacrifice flies by J.D. Martinez and Alex Verdugo produced all the runs Boston would need.

"I feel like I commanded the zone pretty well today. We did a pretty good job of trying to keep these guys off-balance," Ober said. "We're very close [to a turnaround], I feel like."