As slump hits 4 games, Twins not panicking

In the top of the seventh inning of Sunday’s game, Kansas City reliever Josh Staumont blew a fastball at 101.5 mph right past Byron Buxton, the Twins’ hottest hitter, who lost his bat altogether and sent it flying back toward the visitors' dugout behind him.

Not much is clicking right now for this Twins offense, and that was another visible sign of how they were outmatched at times by the Royals' pitching staff during this series. There still wasn’t much life in those bats on Sunday, and not much on the scoreboard to show for it as the Twins fell to the Royals, 4-2, suffered a sweep at the hands of the last-place club in the American League Central and saw their losing streak run to four.

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“We went through some stretches last year where we didn’t play so hot,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. “That’s always going to happen. We knew it would happen this year. We talk about consistency in the way we show up to the field every day and prepare as being some of the most important factors in what we do.

“When you show up and start changing everything, then you end up sending red flags and signals, and then everyone’s on edge. We don’t do that very often, and we’re not not doing it now.”

The Twins scored just 10 runs across the three games in Kansas City, including two apiece in Friday’s series opener and Sunday’s finale. The Twins scored 27 runs in their first three games of the season -- more than a third of their 2020 output -- and have been held to 51 runs in 13 games since, an average of just less than four runs per game.

On Sunday, the Twins’ only extra-base hit came on Max Kepler’s third-inning RBI double, which Jorge Polanco followed with an RBI groundout to account for Minnesota’s two runs. Otherwise, the offense scattered just six singles as right-hander José Berríos labored through 5 1/3 innings on 96 pitches.

The Twins still entered the game seventh in baseball by averaging 5.07 runs per game as an offense, and fifth with 76 runs scored. Their .729 team OPS entering Sunday ranked above league average. Perhaps the recent shortcomings have been amplified by the losing streak, or by the fact that the expectations were set so high at the start of the season by the addition of Josh Donaldson to a loaded lineup and the offensive outburst in that season-opening series against the White Sox.

“I feel pretty good about everything going forward, and I think not overreacting most of the time is the right thing to do, and that’s kind of where we’re sitting right now,” Baldelli said. “We know we didn’t come out here and play well this series, but I don’t think that that means that we’re not going to show up in Milwaukee ready to go.”

The Twins aren’t denying that the offense has been a problem, though. They’re not often too reactive to situations like this, as Baldelli said, but the skipper also noted that his team has been missing too many hittable fastballs, and that’s going to be a point of emphasis moving forward.

The metrics back that up. After finishing second in the Majors with a .654 slugging percentage against fastballs last season, the Twins are down to 14th with a .547 mark in 2020. What’s more: The Twins swung and missed at 18.4 percent of fastballs last season, the fifth-lowest percentage in the Majors, but they are solidly in the middle of the pack with a 21 percent whiff rate against heaters this season.

“When you do see a trend getting larger, or you’re in a very unique set of circumstances like we are, you can address that,” Baldelli said. “There are different things you can do, as opposed to just talking about it. There are things in the cage, there are things out on the field, and every guy has some different cues.”

The Twins are still keeping perspective all the same.

“I don’t think anybody is panicking,” Marwin Gonzalez said before Sunday’s game. “We know the talent that we have in here. It’s weird because we are at a quarter of the season, but at the same time, it’s only like 30-40 at-bats. So it’s no big deal. That’s my personal opinion. Everybody thinks the same in the clubhouse. I don’t think there’s any reason to panic.”