'Pen buckles again, costing Twins a sweep

CHICAGO -- Needless to say, the Twins have experienced a good deal of late-inning heartbreak in the last two weeks. They might have gone through the whole rush of emotions from that stretch again in one afternoon on Wednesday against the White Sox.

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The Twins pulled ahead of the White Sox five times in the series finale, jumping out to leads in the first, second, fifth, seventh and eighth innings -- and saw the White Sox match their output every time. After Minnesota didn’t take advantage of its scoring chance in the 10th, Chicago did in the bottom of the frame, walking off, 9-8, on Leury García’s single through the left side.

On the one hand, the Twins claimed another series victory against the preseason favorites in the American League Central, taking two of three at Guaranteed Rate Field despite Wednesday’s tough loss.

“We did what we came here wanting to do,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “We played well. We executed a lot. We had a lot of good swings. … As a whole, I was pleased with what I saw. It's hard to come in here and play like that and feel like you have the last game in hand as well. It's never in hand. You have to finish them and finish them strong, and we didn't finish as strong as we needed to.”

On the other hand, the Twins’ tough bullpen stretch continued with their sixth game involving a blown lead in the eighth inning or later in the last two-plus weeks -- with all six of those losses coming to the Guardians and White Sox, their top competitors in the division.

In fact, the only games the Twins have lost to their pair of division rivals in that stretch have been these late heartbreakers, meaning they’ve always been playing large swaths of winning baseball against those teams, close to putting some serious distance between themselves and the rest of the division -- but haven’t quite been able to deal those finishing blows.

“I don't know how many games we would be up if we were able to close out all the games that we were ahead,” Ryan Jeffers said. “To an extent, it gives us some sort of confidence knowing that we clearly are the best team in the division. With that being said, we also know that if we want to get to where we want to go, we need to be able to close these games out."

Jorge Polanco gave the Twins the lead with his two-run blast in the fifth; Luis Robert answered with a two-run shot in the bottom of the frame off Emilio Pagán. Another Polanco round-tripper in the seventh gave the second baseman his first multihomer game of the season and Minnesota another one-run lead; Eloy Jiménez singled in a run against Griffin Jax. Gio Urshela crushed another go-ahead homer in the eighth; Andrew Vaughn answered against Trevor Megill.

And after the Twins opted to pull bullpen ace Jhoan Duran after he needed only nine pitches in the ninth inning, Jovani Moran yielded the game-winning hit in the 10th. If Minnesota had pulled ahead, it would have finished the game with Duran on the mound, Baldelli said. It didn’t, and since the Twins are carefully navigating Duran’s usage in his first season as a reliever after he threw only 16 innings last year, they instead turned to Moran.

“There’s always going to be a thought to letting Duran pitch,” Baldelli said. “Like I said, I wish we could use him every other day for two innings. We can’t do that. … It’s the right discussion we have to have every single day, to make sure we’re doing what’s right to win as many games as we can and also make sure he’s in a good spot.”

The Twins know that Duran needs help in the bullpen; president of baseball operations Derek Falvey recently noted that they also need to wait for the sellers’ market to materialize to seek the trades they need.

In the meantime, they’re still winning games and series. These blows are tough to them, but their confidence hasn’t wavered -- especially when they see how they’ve played the majority of the innings in these games.

“We're going to have each other's backs and pick each other up, especially when we're struggling and know that down the road, that's how we're going to learn, and we're going to do better if we're doing that,” Jeffers said.

“Honestly, we’re walking out of here hungrier than when we walked in, and I mean that,” Baldelli said.