Twins battered by bottom of Red Sox batting order, hurt by mistakes throughout 9-3 loss

Every team expects ups and downs over the course of a 162-game season, but the theme of this Twins rut is self-inflicted mistakes.

Jovani Moran gave up a go-ahead three-run triple in a no-ball, two-strike count. Starting pitcher Pablo López issued a walk to the bottom two hitters in the Red Sox lineup, and they both scored. Edouard Julien had a hard one-hopper deflect off his glove, allowing a run to score.

The Twins' mistakes added up to a 9-3 defeat to the Red Sox at Target Field, dropping them a game below .500 (36-37) to match their low point of the year. It was their fourth loss in the past five days, after being outscored 30-14 in those five games.

"It's a mentality thing," López said. "Obviously, it's tough when things are not going the best way because the effort, the willingness, the conviction to try to do things is there. We come to every game expecting to win. When the results are not there, it can be a little bit frustrating, but I think it's just realizing nothing lasts forever."

Since the start of May, the first-place Twins have tread water in baseball's only division that doesn't feature a team with a winning record.

The Twins have their lineup close to full strength, missing only Jorge Polanco and Nick Gordon on the injured list. Their top five batters in the lineup combined to hit 2-for-20 with seven strikeouts Monday. They produced only two baserunners against Red Sox starter James Paxton in the first four innings. Following Christian Vázquez's three-run homer in the fifth inning, they didn't have another runner reach third base.

"We're expecting to play our best baseball when we have all of our guys healthy and all our guys on the field," Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. "That's been probably the frustrating part of the ordeal."

Moran inherited two runners from López in the sixth inning with three lefty batters due up. Moran walked pinch hitter Rob Refsnyder in a seven-pitch at-bat — Twins pitchers walked seven batters, one shy of their season high — before he left a fat pitch over the plate to Verdugo.

"I just threw that changeup in the middle," said Moran, who hadn't allowed an extra-base hit to a lefthanded hitter all season before Verdugo's triple. "I missed that pitch."

López, who struck out nine across 5⅔ innings, walked in a run with the bases loaded on four pitches in the third. In the fourth, he failed to take advantage of an odd play when Pablo Reyes hit a ground ball to the right side of the infield with a runner at first base.

Second baseman Julien slid to stop the ball in shallow right field, then made the heads-up play to immediately throw to third base as runner Connor Wong sprinted around second base. Julien's throw beat Wong by more than five steps, except it bounced in front of third baseman Kyle Farmer and deflected off Farmer's glove out of play.

The umpires conferred and ordered Wong back to third base, citing a rule where the ball went out of play before Reyes advanced past first base. Baserunners advance only two bases when a ball is out of play. The ruling saved a run, but only temporarily, because Jarren Duran drilled a two-run double two pitches later.

"We're in a tough stretch right now," Baldelli said. "Not everything is all up to chance. It's up to us. We have our work cut out for us. We have to figure it out."

The Twins haven't reached the halfway point of their season, but they haven't played with much consistency since the end of April. They now have a 3-4 record on their 10-game homestand after sweeping the Brewers in a two-game series to kick-start it.

"We're not in a good stretch and you have to find a way to change some things," Baldelli said. "And that's not just one guy or two guys. That's us as a team."