ATLANTA — The Minnesota Twins knew going into Atlanta to face the NL East-leading Braves would be a tall order, but after a three-game sweep, the Twins are reeling. With that sweep, the Twins now find themselves in second place in the American League Central behind Cleveland, who leapfrogged them after a win over Kansas City.
The final game of the three-game set was a 3-0 loss in which the Twins were 0-8 with runners in scoring position. After the game, the players held a closed-door meeting with manager Rocco Baldelli.
On Wednesday’s episode of Locked On Twins, which was recorded before the last game of the series, host Brandon Warne discussed the first two games of the series, losses by Sonny Gray and Joe Ryan.
BE SURE to listen and subscribe to Locked On Twins wherever you get your podcasts!
“You look at the scores, and if you’re box score watching, it doesn’t seem to be that big of a deal," Warne said. "You wouldn’t think they were as non-competitive as they’ve been. But it really hasn’t felt like the Twins have been competitive this entire series.”
On Monday night, the game was tied 1-1 heading into the bottom of the seventh inning, but Gray gave up a home run to Marcell Ozuna, which put the Braves up a run. And after two groundball outs and a single, Baldelli removed Gray from the game, and Emilio Pagán replaced him. Pagán gave up a home run to Ronald Acuña Jr., and the Braves went up 4-1.
The lone run by the Twins was scored on a solo shot by Joey Gallo.
The Twins opened up an early 1-0 lead in Tuesday’s game, but Ryan surrendered four runs in the bottom of the first on three home runs, and the Braves didn’t look back. They added two more runs on back-to-back solo shots in the bottom of the second, and Ryan would pitch through the third before being pulled from the game. His final line was six runs on nine hits in three innings; five home runs with five strikeouts and no walks.
Then on Wednesday, the Twins just couldn’t get anything going against a combination of five Atlanta pitchers including starter Kolby Allard, who came into the game with a 6.07 ERA and struck out eight in four and two-thirds innings.
After the game, the Twins players held a closed-door meeting.
“There’s no way we can walk out of this with any positives,” Baldelli said via the Athletic. “If I’m rolling that up and trying to portray it any other way, I’m lying. We have to make some really, really legitimate adjustments to what we’re doing right now if we’re going to go out there and compete and win games against that team or really any other team. I’m not really pleased right now with the effort this series. The second half is here, but we have some work to do in this second half because we can’t play like this.”
The Twins had an off day on Thursday and will face the Orioles in Baltimore, which is no easy feat. Baltimore is currently in second place in the American League East, but they just dropped two out of three to the surging Cincinnati Reds.
For Minnesota, it isn’t do or die at the halfway through the season, but they need to figure some things out offensively, and if they want to stay near the top of the division, they need to figure it out soon.
BE SURE to listen and subscribe to Locked On Twins wherever you get your podcasts!