MINNEAPOLIS -- During that brief glimmer of a surge last week when Carlos Correa found his stroke again, the offense started putting up more runs and the Twins strung together four wins in five games, the message was this: It’ll soon get even better once Byron Buxton gets back and makes his impact felt, too.

He’s still searching for that impact -- and the Twins are, once again, looking for a reversal of their fortunes.

The offense has again started to dry up, which has coupled with a rough turn through the rotation to sink the Twins below .500 after a tough outing for Pablo López and a depleted bullpen led to a 9-3 defeat to the Red Sox in the opener of a four-game series at Target Field on Monday night.

That marked the Twins’ fourth loss in their past five games -- and that has made Buxton’s search for offensive footing following his return from his bruised ribs particularly visible. Buxton’s 0-for-3 game with one walk and two strikeouts on Monday made him 0-for-16 with 10 strikeouts since he was activated from the 10-day IL last Thursday, and he’s now hitless in his last 24 at-bats, dating back to May 28.

“We’re expecting more of ourselves, and we’re expecting to play our best baseball when we have all of our guys healthy and all of our guys on the field and ready to go,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “So that’s been, probably, the frustrating part of the ordeal. Having to look up and go, ‘Shoot, we have our guys out there. It’s time to play good.’ That it is. It’s time to play good.”

Buxton spent much of his day out of the starting lineup Sunday just trying to relax his mind and dig out of his mental hole. But he also worked in the batting cage from the second inning on, trying to better see spin while even using the velocity machine for the first time “in a while,” he said.

He said that when he was on the IL because of the pain in his ribs stemming from the hit-by-pitch on June 1, he was able to spend three or four days at the end hitting off the tee, flips and the hitting machine. But he simply hasn’t found any timing against live pitching -- whether fastballs or offspeed, he said -- and thinks he’s guessing more on the field, as evidenced by five swinging strikeouts and five looking since his return from the IL.

“I still feel great,” Buxton said. “It just ain't going the way I want it to, you know? Just probably doing a little more guessing and not trusting what I'm doing right now. But if you don't feel like your swing is there, that's what you tend to do. Got a good idea now of where I want to be, and it better be good. I’ve got to stay positive.”

Buxton has always been a streaky hitter, and the tough part, Baldelli says, is that he typically takes fewer swings to prepare for a game than just about any other hitter. Buxton notably eschews outdoor batting practice before games, instead opting for more targeted work in the cage. And he has been limited in the scope of his work in the past by his health and the maintenance he needed to stay on the field.

Buxton also dreads the idea of rehab assignments to find that timing again, because it seemed to him that he’d get banged up every time he played in those Minor League games -- and he has come back from extended periods off plenty hot at the plate before.

So the Twins have to trust Buxton to figure it out on the field, because getting the best version of him back is as important as anything else.

“The only way to get there is to work and to get out there during the game and play, and make adjustments and try something a little different,” Baldelli said. “I don’t want to hold him out of the lineup. That’s [not] going to get him, big picture-wise, where he needs to be. We need him. … We want to try to find a way to get him to his best.”

The Twins’ other hitters aren’t doing much, either -- but the last time that happened, Correa’s upped production gave the club a jolt and a short winning turnaround. As Baldelli said, it’s simply time for them to hit to “play good” -- and Buxton is critical to that.