MINNEAPOLIS -- It started off as a historic ambush of one of the elite pitchers of the game, three straight homers off Gerrit Cole that left a dent in the record books of both the Twins and Yankees and made the 2022 Twins one of seven teams since 1900 to open a game by going deep three times in a row.

It ended as another chapter in the ever-growing tome of Yankee-induced frustration for Minnesota.

By the time Clay Holmes struck out Carlos Correa to cap the Twins’ 10-7 loss to the Yankees on Thursday at Target Field, all that noteworthy homer-hitting seemed like it had happened in a completely different ballgame. New York scored seven unanswered runs from the fifth inning on, aided by several Twins miscues, in a script that’s grown familiar over the years around the Twin Cities.

But those on the Twins frankly don’t think about that at all. To them, this loss was an avoidable defeat against an elite team -- and they’re focused far more on the quality of their offensive output for three games: 19 runs and 32 hits against the best pitching staff in the league, undone in part by a handful of mistakes.

“It's not just winnable, I think we definitely should have won that ballgame,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “The reasons why we didn't, I don't think those are going to be things that are going to affect us going forward. I think we can set it aside and we can build on this game even though it was a loss.”

The Twins raced out to a 7-3 lead by the third inning after pounding a career-high five homers off Cole, including two from a resurgent Byron Buxton, knocking the Yankees’ ace out of the game after 2 1/3 frames. But the mistakes accumulated from there, and the Bronx Bombers took advantage.

With Cole out of the game, the Twins could have continued to add in the third inning with Gio Urshela on second with one out, but when Jose Miranda’s deep fly ball was caught at the warning track, Urshela failed to properly retouch third base on his way back to second, and was called out on an appeal play that ended the inning. That opened the door for the Yankees to pull within two on homers by Joey Gallo and DJ LeMahieu in the fifth.

Then, in the sixth, a mental error cost the Twins when Gleyber Torres’ routine infield popup dropped between Correa and Jorge Polanco after the latter appeared to settle under it but peeled off to cover second base. Aaron Hicks followed with a game-tying homer, and an inning later, even Jhoan Duran had a rare off night, allowing the two go-ahead runs in a perfect storm of calamity.

"[Correa] trusted me,” Polanco said. “It was my fault. I got my eye off the ball. … We just try to forget that and come back tomorrow and try to make the plays."

The context of this collapse coming at the hands of the Yankees won’t make it easier to swallow outside the clubhouse -- but within those walls, the Twins are simply learning from the mistakes and moving on. They’re still in first place, and they handed season highs in runs allowed to the three best starting pitchers from the best rotation in baseball: Jameson Taillon, Nestor Cortes and Cole.

“You're going to struggle. You're going to make errors,” Correa said. “It's all part of the game. The way, mentally, you approach things the next day, it's what sets you apart from the rest, and that's what we've been doing all year when we hit a rough patch here and there.”

When Joe Ryan, Josh Winder and Sonny Gray come off the injured list, there should be less pressure on less-proven bullpen arms to bridge important situations. With Correa policing the infield, they’re confident these weird mishaps won’t continue to come into play.

They didn’t feel like they put their best foot forward, and they still played a hard-fought series that they could (and likely should) have won. That will make it easier to put this disappointment behind them.

“We're a great offense,” Correa said. “You've got to put everything in perspective, right? We've got [five] starters on the IL right now. Usually, when that happens, it's tough to stay atop the division, and we've been able to manage to do that, even though our starters are hurting right now.”

“I feel like teams are measuring us,” Buxton said. “They don’t know what we’re capable of, and that’s what makes us a little bit more scary.”