Twins knocked out of first place as Dodgers win 10th in row, dominate season series

LOS ANGELES — For Carlos Correa, it's all about compartmentalization.

For instance, the former Houston Astros shortstop knew he was in for the loudest booing of the season every time his name boomed through Dodger Stadium or he fielded the ball or he stepped up to the plate. That's what the 2017 sign-stealing scandal has saddled Correa with in most road cities, but especially in Los Angeles, since the Astros won the World Series against the Dodgers that year.

Not letting the deafening sound of more than 50,000 people chanting that he's a "Cheater!" for two-consecutive games shake his performance is certainly about focusing at the task at hand. And that's also how Correa feels about his new Twins' team losing 8-5 to the Dodgers on Wednesday.

In four games against the Dodgers this year, the Twins lost every outing by a combined score of 32-10. The Dodgers are 77-33 and the best team in baseball on a 10-game winning streak. The Twins are 57-53 and now a game behind Cleveland in the AL Central. Except for one day, the Twins had been in the division lead, or tied for first, since April 24.

Correa called the Dodgers a complete team with a relentless lineup that played basically perfect baseball this series, including in their 10-3 victory Tuesday. And while, sure, it's easy to spiral about such a poor showing against a postseason favorite and what that means for the Twins' playoff chances, Correa's not going to nosedive about it. There's too many divisional games left – with the Twins, Guardians and White Sox all within 2 ½ games of each other – that take precedence now rather than a season sweep to a National League squad.

"The only way we'll face them again is all the way to the World Series, and I'll take that," Correa said. "… There's no looking back on this series. Obviously they played way better than we did. That was obvious.

"Right now, focus on what's ahead."

Directly ahead, which is a three-game series at the Angels (49-63) starting Friday after another day off to flock to the South Bay.

That should be enough time to let go of how the Twins had their best opportunity to beat the No. 1 team Wednesday but couldn't finish it.

The Twins fell behind early, with starter Sonny Gray giving up a leadoff homer to Max Muncy plus Cody Bellinger's sacrifice fly. But the Twins rebounded immediately in the top of the third with Gary Sanchez' leadoff walk and a Luis Arraez base hit, both scoring on Jorge Polanco's home run.

That lead extended a bit in the fifth from Sanchez' leadoff home run, and the Twins loaded the bases later on but stranded all three runners. The Dodgers then tied it in the bottom of that inning on Trea Turner's RBI single and Will Smith's RBI double.

Gray said why the Dodgers are such a hot team right now is their ability to consistently capitalize on a pitcher's mistakes. For him, that was his fastball to righties, which he wanted to throw in and off the plate and instead left it open over the middle, and the Dodgers turned many of those into doubles to right center.

"We feel like we played a fine game," Gray said. "I go in and put a zero up in the fifth, probably a different game because we had a little bit of momentum there, bases loaded, we were kind of doing our thing. And then they immediately tie the game up, and then they hit the solo homer to take the lead. And it was kind of like we never caught up from there."

Gray's night ended after 4 2⁄3 innings with six hits, four runs — three earned — two walks and five strikeouts. Dodgers starter Ryan Pepiot went 4 1⁄3 innings with five hits, four earned runs, three walks and four strikeouts.

Twins reliever Michael Fulmer gave up that aforementioned home run to Chris Taylor in the sixth to put the Dodgers back in the lead. Fellow bullpen arm Griffin Jax then gave up a double to Turner and intentionally walked Smith before pinch hitter Joey Gallo blasted a three-run homer to cement the victory.

The Twins netted a consolation run in the bottom of the ninth from Arraez' two-out double and Correa's groundball single that advanced Arraez to third. Craig Kimbrel's wild pitch then let Arraez s skip home, but Polanco flew out to end the comeback.

Twins manager Rocco Baldelli admitted there was an execution gap between his team and the Dodgers. He also owned up to the five errors through these two games as showing how the Twins are not playing their sharpest baseball, which they were accomplishing for a stretch earlier in the year.

But he agreed with Correa that trying to draw any future conclusions from these games against the Dodgers is unwise.

"I think thinking too much about the postseason or anything going on later this month, next month and especially October, that's a lot of thinking, and we have a lot of doing that we need to do and get done," Baldelli. "… We'd be misguided and probably not as focused as we need to be if we were worried about anything else. No. The Dodgers played well against us this season. We're done with them."

Until that World Series, at least.