As MLB trade deadline nears, there’s a sense of do-or-die urgency for the Twins

LOS ANGELES ‐ It’s not as though the Twins needed any reminders of what they’re playing for, but they had to look at the Dodgers’ World Series rings on the scoreboard throughout their pregame drills Monday night in Los Angeles. The Dodgers gave away replicas of the rings they earned last October to each of the 45,000 or so fans who bought tickets to Monday’s game.

After going only 3-3 against a pair of last-place NL teams in their last two series, and with three games against the also-last-place Washington Nationals at Target Field this coming weekend, the Twins haven’t exactly taken advantage of the schedule lull so far, and now they face the defending World Series champions, a team with 10 more wins than the Twins had entering Monday.

The Twins will play nine games before the MLB trade deadline passes at the end of the month, a chance to move up from the 11th-best record in the American League, perhaps a chance to convince the team’s decision-makers not to deal away part of the roster. Does this final week and a half feel crucial?

“If you want to paint it as a dramatic sort of situation, you can. You can do that,” Rocco Baldelli, manager of this 48-51 team entering Monday, said. “You can say that maybe the next couple of weeks might change the course of the season, one direction or another. That’s the reality of it. That’s what we have to own.”

Baldelli said he has challenged his players to treat it as an opportunity, not a hardship. “Don’t worry about it in a negative sense,” the manager said he told his team. “Think about it in a positive light and try to go in the direction that we want to go.”

He understands that’s not so easy in today’s perpetual crisis-mode culture.

“With the proliferation of social media putting reports and [rumors] in front of guys, what ends up happening sometimes is some guys start thinking about it a lot,” Baldelli said. “I try to keep things as uniform as possible and keep it normal and a good work environment. Have there been occasions where I’ve grabbed guys on the side if I think it’s affecting them? Yeah, I have. Do I make team speeches? No, I don’t do that.”

You might have seen Byron Buxton’s spectacular catch on the warning track in Denver on Saturday night, a snag he made flat on his back, and only after the ball bounded on his legs and stomach before he secured it.

Baldelli did not.

“It’s what, 425 feet, maybe even more than that, from where we’re sitting? So I couldn’t really see much,” Baldelli said of his view of the extra-deep center-field fence at Coors Field. “The players look like little specks, tiny little people out there, they’re so far away. It was probably a good play.”

It was, and it was one more entry into the Twins’ semiannual amazement at the unique baseball stage that is Coors Field. There is the mile-high altitude, the largest outfield in the game and the extra offense that those two factors produce.

“You have to run a long way to catch a lot of the balls hit here,” Baldelli said. “[Harrison] Bader probably ran, I don’t know, a couple miles out there during the series because he’s got to cover such a big [left-center] gap as well.”

“It’s big, for sure. When you’re standing out there, you’re way back, so when the ball is hit really deep, you can tell how much room” you have to cover, Castro said.

Not that he’s complaining, not after collecting a triple and a home run over the weekend. “For hitters, it’s great. It’s one of the best parks to hit in because there is a lot of room to get hits in.”

Kody Clemens didn’t homer, but he doubled his career total of triples by hitting a ball off the wall on both Saturday and Sunday. His Coors Field discovery? “It is hard to breathe, I know that now,” Clemens said. “The thin air, you feel it when you’re running at top speed.”

But there are players who enjoy that feeling. It was Buxton’s first appearance at the downtown Denver ballpark.

“I liked it. It’s fun,” Buxton said with a nod. “I love having all that room to run around in.”

Farmer, who turns 34 next month, hasn’t been a wise investment for Colorado, with his batting average sagging to .215 and his OPS to .600 in 70 games. But Baldelli said he’s pretty sure Farmer’s career in baseball will extend beyond his playing days.