Twins drop seventh straight game amid streaky season

WASHINGTON -- Rocco Baldelli knows the vibes. He’s attuned to what’s going on. Hours before first pitch Monday in the nation’s capital, he didn’t hesitate when replying, totally straight-faced, to a reporter’s question about the benefits of staying even-kneeled during a long season.

“Why?” Baldelli asked, tongue planted firmly in cheek. “Have we been streaky lately?”

Of course, Baldelli knows the Twins have been streaky. It’s been plain to see. A week after rattling off 17 wins in 20 games, Minnesota lost its seventh straight Monday night, limping back to within a game of .500 by virtue of their 12-3 defeat to the Nationals.

It is Minnesota’s first seven game losing streak since April 2018, when it lost eight in a row.

“I’ve seen a lot of streaky baseball -- we all have,” Baldelli said after the game, striking a more serious tone. “This is next level stuff. We’re taking this to the next level. Sometimes that could be a good thing and right now, it’s not a very good thing.”

Baldelli addressed the team in a closed-door meeting after Sunday’s loss in Cleveland. The players huddled themselves after Monday’s defeat in D.C. to further address this recent slide with an eye toward playing more consistent baseball overall.

“We’re not where we need to be, and tomorrow we have to be better,” shortstop Carlos Correa said. “We have to turn it around. It’s not fun to be in this spot. It’s not where we want to be, and we just have to be better and everybody knows it.”

The Twins know that when they’re good, they’re really good. When they’re going bad, it seems like nothing can go right. So why this seesaw of a season for Minnesota? Monday’s loss put a few reasons into focus:

It’s the hitting
One obvious culprit is Minnesota’s feast-or-famine offense, which jumped ahead early Monday but then went quiet until the middle innings while the Nationals built a six-run lead. They did receive Carlos Correa’s third homer of the year, but managed little else against Nats rookie starter Mitchell Parker in another tough night for the offense during this streak.

“We’re not doing very well offensively right now,” Baldelli said. “It's hard to watch. It's not easy to watch right now.”

As a team, the Twins slashed .284/.342/.489 during their run of 17 wins in 20 games. During this seven-game skid, they’re averaging 1.7 runs per game and are slashing only .177/.228/.265. Each is the worst in MLB since Minnesota’s skid began on May 14.

Frustration is mounting. Are adjustments on the horizon?

“The guy just stood out there and threw off speed pitches for like four straight innings, and we didn't do anything about it,” Baldelli said. “We continued to kind of wave at them and look for fastballs, which today, weren't coming. In this stretch of games where we've been struggling, that's been a common theme. We're going up there swinging big, and swinging big is not getting it done right now, because we're swinging like they're throwing all fastballs and they don't throw us very many fastballs.”

It’s the pitching?
Teams turn to their aces to stop losing streaks. And while Pablo López pitched like an ace during his first season in Minnesota in 2023, he hasn’t been quite that guy this year. He wasn’t on Monday night.

Coming off a grind of an outing last time out against the Yankees, López straight up struggled against Washington, coughing up seven earned runs in five innings as his ERA ballooned almost a full run, to 4.72. He’s now allowed 18 hits compared to only eight strikeouts over 11 1/3 innings in his past two outings.

“It’s wild, because we go from the high of a 12-game winning streak, and the way it’s been, it feels like the low,” López said. “In a long season you want to limit spending too much time on the low.”

The Twins’ rotation isn’t bad. They’ve gotten considerable contributions from all of their regular starters, and a jolt recently from former top prospect Simeon Woods Richardson, who's been quite good in six starts. But nobody’s been dominant, and they are lacking that stopper type on nights like Monday, when the chance to break a losing streak against a beatable team presents itself.

“We haven’t been able to make something happen,” López said. “I was given the opportunity to give the team that …and I didn’t take advantage of the opportunity.”

“We grabbed the lead today, which is good,” Baldelli said. “And I mean, we didn’t hold it for five minutes.”