Déjà vu: Twins suffer 3rd blown lead in 5 games

CLEVELAND -- It happened again.

Normally, Twins manager Rocco Baldelli is quick to find a sense of reassurance and optimism following even the toughest of losses. Thursday was not one of those days. Not when the Twins had been walked off by the Guardians for a second straight game, having blown three leads in the eighth inning or later in the five-game series and having blown five such leads in their past eight games against this divisional rival -- all in the span of a little over a week.

Cleveland second baseman Andrés Giménez didn’t exuberantly hurl his bat 30 feet into the air like teammate Josh Naylor did on Wednesday, nor did he headbutt his manager after circling the bases. But Giménez’s walk-off blast might have felt like even more of a gut punch as the Twins slunk off the field for the second game in a row, felled 5-3 by another late bullpen collapse.

“This is probably the most difficult, most, I would say, gut-wrenching series I think I’ve ever been a part of,” Baldelli said. “I’ve never really seen … five games against one team in four days that felt like that.”

The Twins have played eight games against the Guardians in the last 10 days. They held a lead in the eighth inning or later in all eight of them. They lost five.

Naylor’s blast off Jharel Cotton in the 10th inning on Wednesday and Giménez’s homer off Tyler Thornburg -- the de facto last man standing on Thursday in a heavily used bullpen -- handed the Twins their first consecutive walk-off losses since Sept. 21-22, 2018, in Oakland.

“We had a chance -- not just a chance to win. We should have won every one of these games,” Baldelli emphasized. “But ‘should have’ doesn't really matter here, and we have to go out there and finish games out with good baseball in the last couple of innings.”

This time, the lead was 3-1 heading into the eighth inning. Cleveland had only mustered one hit against Chris Archer, Jovani Moran and Tyler Duffey, the latter two forced into action in a high-leverage game due to the severe attrition of the preceding four games: Emilio Pagán, Caleb Thielbar and Griffin Jax were likely all unavailable, having each pitched two consecutive days. Jhoan Duran had thrown 33 pitches in Wednesday’s loss.

When Thornburg entered for the eighth, his first time pitching in any sort of leverage situation since joining the Twins on June 12, he had a feeling the game would end with him -- win or lose. A walk and two hit-by-pitches set up a missed play at third between Carlos Correa and Gio Urshela that let the tying run score. An inning later, Thornburg walked José Ramírez and then hung the decisive 3-2 fastball to Giménez.

It’s rare that Baldelli will address the team after any loss. He did so on Thursday, reminding them not to dwell, per Archer.

“When you're out there and you play and you feel like you outplay the other team for seven innings the other day and lose, that'll take something out of you if you let it,” Baldelli said. “And we just can't let that happen.”

“I've been on teams that have won 107 games and this [stuff] happens at some point in the season,” Correa said. “It's nothing new. But my job as a guy who's been there before is to let the guys know that it's just normal.”

What can the Twins do at this point? With the Trade Deadline more than a month away, markets haven’t yet materialized. For now, they’ll need to look within and find the execution that has eluded them.

Duffey took a massive step forward with four strikeouts in 1 2/3 scoreless innings in one of his most meaningful outings since dipping down in the leverage ranks. Moran also threw 1 1/3 shutout frames of relief. But it’s one thing to find a handful of those outings in games that the Twins ultimately lose, just like it’s one thing to say that the quality of Pagán’s stuff is as good as it has ever been.

As the Twins have found, it’s another thing altogether to actually translate those to wins.

They’re not far off. Minnesota has played winning baseball for the vast majority of all of these games against the Guardians. A month from now, there will almost certainly be new faces in the mix, bumping many down in bullpen leverage and helping the club find more comfortable roles.

“I don’t approach things by looking for outside help,” Baldelli said. “We look at things here in the clubhouse and spend our energy on trying to get our players better to be able to go out there and help us win games. If I’m worrying about players in other organizations, I’m not doing my job.”

As Correa noted, the Twins are still in first place -- by one game -- even with the bullpen going through its toughest stretch of Baldelli’s tenure in Minnesota. It could have been much more. But they can’t worry about that; they know they just need to execute the way they know they can.