Byron Buxton homers twice, but Twins lose 5-3 to Guardians and split series

In retrospect, perhaps “retiring the W” before Sunday’s game was a mistake. Because the Twins sure could have used one.

Instead, they took an L, and wound up with a disappointing split of their four-game showdown with the Guardians. Byron Buxton homered twice, but no other teammate drove in a run, enabling Cleveland to restore its AL Central lead to 3½ games by defeating the Twins 5-3 at Target Field.

The 1924 Washington Senators, World Series champions, forebears of the Twins franchise and pregame “letter retirement” honorees, would not be pleased.

“Things didn’t go our way, [but] it’s one series. Still have seven weeks of baseball left,” Buxton said. “This series don’t make the rest of our season.”

No, but their confidence-building doubleheader sweep of the Guardians on Friday raised hopes they could move into first place by series’ end. Instead, the Twins offense largely went into hibernation over the weekend; they managed only four hits in Saturday’s 2-1 loss and only four total runs over the two days.

And when they appeared poised to steal a critical victory in the bottom of the ninth inning in the series finale, it all came apart. The Twins loaded the bases with no outs on two singles and a walk against Guardians closer Emmanuel Clase. But Willi Castro struck out on a 3-2 cutter and Trevor Larnach grounded into a double play to end the threat, Clase’s 22nd save in 23 career chances against the Twins.

“We come back against Clase, who’s been basically untouchable this year. We go bases loaded, and we’ve got a chance to win the game,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “We’ll take that. There were some things we did better than other things over the course of the four games. But I like the way that we played.”

It might have been a shutout Sunday if not for Buxton and his third two-homer game of the season.

He launched a first-pitch fastball from Cleveland starter Tanner Bibee a half-dozen rows deep into the left-field bleachers in the second inning, then greeted reliever Nick Sandlin in the bottom of the eighth by depositing a two-strike slider into the flower planters atop the left-field fence, scoring Royce Lewis ahead of him.

“He’s been swinging the bat great. I think he feels pretty good about where he’s at right now physically,” Baldelli said. “I’d like to have him out there as much as we possibly can, because we win a lot of games when he’s out there.”

But not usually when the opposition assembles a home run, two walks, two singles and a double in one inning, as the Guardians did in the sixth against the Twins bullpen. David Fry crushed a Caleb Thielbar fastball into the stands in left-center to break a 1-1 tie, and Thielbar then walked Andrés Giménez on 14 pitches, with Giménez fouling 10 of them off. Another eight-pitch walk to David Schneemann followed. With two outs, Thielbar was replaced by Cole Sands, who owned a 1.69 ERA since the All-Star break.

But Brayan Rocchio dropped a broken-bat RBI blooper just over Kyle Farmer’s head in short right field, and Steven Kwan hit a bouncer up the middle to make it 4-1. Will Brennan made it three consecutive run-scoring hits with a double to left-center.