Twins offense feeble again in loss to Rangers; Byron Buxton has MRI after leaving game

The Twins still have 42 games left to play this season, and Monday's 2-1 loss to the Rangers was just one of 58 such defeats in 2022. Yet it somehow felt a lot more foreboding, almost as if the season actually ended that night at Target Field.

That's perhaps a bit dramatic. But when the team loses what feels like the umpteenth game because of dire clutch hitting, and the star center fielder exits the game early to head straight for the hospital for imaging, and the gap to first place in the division keeps widening, well, maybe some histrionics are allowable.

"You can still remain confident, and still believe in the people around you and your team as a whole and still acknowledge that you're in a rut," Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. "There's no way to watch us play and not see it."

The 2-1 final score was already intact when Byron Buxton departed, coming out in the top of the seventh inning for Jake Cave. Buxton has an extensive injury history throughout his major league career, and while he's avoided the injured list so far this season, that's not because he's been in pristine health. He's dealt with right knee tendinitis the entire season and has appeared in just 92 of the Twins' 120 games so far because of it.

But that wasn't what took him out Monday. He appeared to aggravate his right leg in his final at-bat, a strikeout in the fifth. He then took to the outfield in the top of the next inning and had to deal with several plays, including a diving attempt at a line drive. The Twins termed his injury right hip tightness and sent him for an MRI postgame. The hope is that this is minor and Buxton can meet the team in Houston for the upcoming series, but the mood wasn't exactly optimistic for that.

Baldelli said Buxton hasn't been in a good spot physically for the past few days but has continued to play, albeit not at 100%. The hip issue isn't new; Buxton missed several weeks early in 2021 with a hip strain and has also managed discomfort there for most of this season, along with his knee.

"The guy is a warrior. The guy goes out there and plays through things that are not imaginable for many, both other players and people watching and Byron Buxton fans," Baldelli said. "What he's done to this point in the year has been pretty amazing with the physical difficulties that he's had. Right now, I don't most likely see him playing [Tuesday] or anything like that.

"… We're going to treat it as a day-to-day issue, but it could be more than a day-to-day issue."

Buxton is hitting .224 this season with 51 RBI and 28 home runs along with a solid number of extra-base hits. But much like the rest of the Twins' lineup, he has struggled recently, collecting just one hit in his past four games and going without an RBI since Aug. 14.

The Twins are in the midst of playing on 13 consecutive days, a stretch they have started by going 1-3 against the Rangers and a measly 2-for-26 with runners in scoring position. And now the 62-58 Twins might have to finish the rest of the run without a key player while trailing two games behind Cleveland in the American League Central. And the third-place White Sox are only a game behind them.

Briefly in the fourth inning, the Twins were ahead thanks to a pair of extra-base hits: a Gio Urshela triple and a Nick Gordon RBI double. But Twins starter Sonny Gray threw just one pitch at the top of the fifth before the Rangers equalized, on Adolis Garcia's homer. The Rangers took the lead in the following frame on a Corey Seager single.

The Twins did turn a triple play, their second of the season, in the fourth inning when first baseman Jose Miranda caught Nathaniel Lowe's liner with runners on first and second, caught the runner off first and threw to shortstop Carlos Correa to catch the runner off second as well.

Gray pitched six innings, giving up five hits and those two runs with a walk, a wild pitch and six strikeouts. A high-leverage bullpen of Michael Fulmer, Griffin Jax and Caleb Thielbar then allowed just one hit and no runs the rest of the night.

"I can only speak for myself: I'm going to continue to show up and try and get better at my craft every day," Gray said of how the Twins can pull out of this spiral with the playoffs looming. "… I guess keep trying to give myself an opportunity to get deeper in a game. I guess keep kind of doing what I'm doing, what we're doing, and hopefully get that chance."

The pitching, though, hasn't been the problem. It's the offense. And the Twins seem a bit unsure of how to fix it.

Baldelli says the game plan and preparation are solid but perhaps the execution of those is not. Carlos Correa doesn't think it's really physical or mental. Both acknowledged it just takes one big moment to exorcise all the at-bat demons.

"There's no explanation needed. It's just poor baseball play by us. It's as simple as that," Correa said. "We're a lot better than that."