CLEVELAND -- What looked to be the magnum opus of a dizzyingly impressive season of high-leverage relief for Griffin Jax instead quickly whiplashed into another episode of devastation for the Twins.

This was the game they really needed to have in this critical four-game series against the Guardians with ace Pablo López on the mound. When Jax escaped a bases-loaded jam to hold a one-run lead in the seventh inning, the path appeared clear -- that is, until Kyle Manzardo lifted the go-ahead, two-run blast an inning later to stamp out the Twins’ hopes in a 4-3 loss.

The team’s now-healthy stars had done their part to scrape together some runs, and the pitching plan was exactly how the Twins would have hoped to draw it up -- and it still wasn’t enough, when things mattered most.

“It's pretty heartbreaking,” Jax said.

Monday’s loss at Progressive Field pushed the Twins’ deficit in the AL Central to 7 1/2 games with 12 left to play, rendering the divisional race essentially moot, regardless of how these next three games go. Minnesota’s lead over Detroit in the AL Wild Card standings dwindled to 1 1/2 games after the Tigers beat the Royals on Monday night.

“Our margin of error keeps shrinking and shrinking,” López said. “Now, it's to the point where you've got to take it one day at a time, one pitch at a time, one at-bat at a time. Today will be a tough pill to swallow.”

It’s a particularly tough pill to swallow because, when manager Rocco Baldelli can go from López to Jax and Jhoan Duran with a lead, that’s the Twins’ best-case scenario with the least possible variance from a depleted bullpen, and one the Twins will always expect to win.

And for a fleeting few minutes, that looked to be in the cards.

“It’s not like they didn’t throw the ball well,” Baldelli said. “Sometimes, you have the right guys out there and guys that have been very, very good and productive for us all year long. … I will be thinking about it all night and tomorrow -- what could we have done here?”

López left the bases loaded with the Twins holding a 3-2 lead when he was pulled for Jax in the seventh. Jax, the third-most valuable reliever in baseball this season per FanGraphs, completely overpowered Andrés Giménez for a three-pitch strikeout and dispatched longtime Twins tormentor José Ramírez on a one-pitch groundout to escape with that margin intact.

But in the eighth, it quickly vanished. Jax has not preferred to pitch parts of multiple innings, and has openly spoken of the mental toll he feels in trying to do so -- and after he paced the dugout between frames, he allowed a leadoff double to Josh Naylor, then the one-out, two-run blast to the rookie Manzardo on a first-pitch fastball.

“It's really hard,” Jax said. “Trying to just regulate your emotions and be able to almost get yourself back to a spot where you feel like you came in the inning before. But I don't have Spring Training to work on that. I have to do it now. I understand that. We're kind of running on fumes as a staff.”

Though the most visible burden will fall on Jax, who hadn’t allowed a homer since July 21, and López pointed the finger at himself for allowing the momentum to swing towards Cleveland by loading the bases in the seventh, the truth is this: The Twins still are not scoring runs.

“If we’re able to do what we need to do on the offensive end, we win,” Baldelli said. “But we did not. We have to do better and we have to put nine innings together.”

They only mustered three runs on Monday, leaving 10 on the basepaths while going 2-for-9 with runners in scoring position, held to four or fewer runs for the 17th time in 27 games, a stretch in which they’ve gone 9-18.

While Byron Buxton drove home a pair in the Twins’ three-run third inning, they stranded multiple runners in the fourth and sixth, including Royce Lewis’ flyout with the bases loaded in the latter.

There was bound to be an acclimation period for the Twins’ star hitters coming off the IL, but the pressure continues to mount with increased urgency -- and now, heartbreak.

“Everyone's aware of the standings,” López said. “There's a scoreboard wherever you go. There's apps. There's social media. But we can't let that give us self-inflicted pressure.”