Twins’ yearlong nosedive started with a single blown game, and hasn’t let up

Pablo López remembers the feeling around Target Field during the Twins’ 12-game winning streak in 2024, their 10-of-12 stretch three weeks later, their eight-of-nine clip in June to surge into second place. When they opened a mid-August road trip with three consecutive wins over the defending World Series champion Texas Rangers, “We were playing so well, we thought we were the greatest thing ever,” López said. “We’re going to win the whole thing.”

He opened the Aug. 18 finale in Texas — exactly one year ago Monday — by pitching six shutout innings to give the 70-53 Twins a 4-0 lead. By the time he was removed, the out-of-town scoreboard showed Cleveland had already lost in Milwaukee, “and we all thought we were about to be a game out [of first place], right behind” the Guardians, López said.

What happened next didn’t change everything, López believes.

But everything did change.

In the span of 19 pitches, a seven-batter sequence that took roughly 15 minutes to play out, Twins reliever Jorge Alcala allowed a single, two doubles and a pair of home runs, and the Twins suddenly trailed. Minnesota lost 6-5 in 10 innings, “a tough loss, but nothing to worry too much about,” said Ryan Jeffers, who had homered in the first inning. “It’s funny — well, not funny — how everything turned out.”

That walk-off loss to the Rangers was the first setback in what would turn into one of the biggest collapses in Twins history — a 12-27 finish that not only cost them the postseason berth they seemingly had locked up but one that still lingers to this day.

The Twins have played 163 games in the calendar year since that day, and with a 58-66 record this season, they have won only 70 of them, alongside 93 losses. That’s a .429 winning percentage that’s worse than all but seven full seasons of Twins baseball in the 65 years since they arrived in Minnesota, and worse than every MLB team in that time except the Colorado Rockies (51-111), Chicago White Sox (55-107), Washington Nationals (66-96) and Los Angeles Angels (70-93).

“We say, ‘Tough game to lose,’ but it didn’t end with that game. It definitely shaped our unforgettable collapse that still nags me to this day,” López said. “The competitor in me, I expect to win, we all do. During the offseason I beat myself up thinking about it.”

He’s not alone, of course.

“It’s hard not to think about” the collapse and the failure to turn things around this year, Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. “It’s something I’ve thought about many times before and probably will think about at some different points in the future.”

The Twins allowed the most runs in the American League from Aug. 18 on, and only four teams scored fewer.

“It was hard to witness. Things just steamrolled and snowballed, and we couldn’t put anything together,” López said. “The things that had worked for us, that we had so much confidence in, just didn’t work anymore.”

López wonders whether the team’s good times made the Twins too susceptible to a long slump. Since even the best team in any MLB season loses roughly 50 games, it’s easier to write off any single loss, “and pretty soon, what should have been one or two becomes a five-game streak,” López said.

“We didn’t have a common mentality of like, when you lose, there are still positives, there are still ways to pick your teammates up so the energy level doesn’t crash all the way down,” the veteran pitcher said.

“When we were good on the field, we felt so great. But when things didn’t work, the feeling went from such a high to such a low, and we weren’t able to kind of keep it medium. We couldn’t keep our continuum more level, and it made it so much harder to get out of it.”

The confidence that was shattered by that finish in 2024 had mostly been restored by spring training, but a 7-15 start in April shook the Twins again. Then, another unexpectedly long winning streak, this one 13 games in May, temporarily reset their optimism.

But only temporarily.

“Frankly, we just have to play better, that’s really the only way I can look at it,” Baldelli said. “I always will take full responsibility for our team, even more so when we don’t play well. And we just have not performed the way we have to perform.”

Perhaps most distressing is the lack of progress made by the position players the Twins drafted and developed themselves. Lewis, his surgically repaired knees and injury-prone legs now a constant injury worry, is the easiest target, considering his status as the first overall pick in the 2017 MLB draft. But fellow first-rounders Trevor Larnach and Matt Wallner have yet to establish themselves as reliable run-producers and this year are batting a combined .202 with runners in scoring position. Brooks Lee has shown more promise but so far is an average defender and below average at the plate.

Edouard Julien and Jose Miranda, former draftees given long auditions in years past, seem to have played themselves out of the team’s plans. And while the Twins have some highly prized prospects in their minor league system, none seem ready to step in and play a major role in turning things around.

When the Twins lost series to the Rockies and Nationals as the second half opened last month, team President Derek Falvey decided to sacrifice this season and build for the future, trading the team’s five most effective relievers, anyone with an expiring contract and Correa, freeing up $70 million in payroll space over the next three years.

“It’s not what any of us wanted. But it’s the reality we have to face, because this — not winning, not being the champions that we believed we could be — is what our reality is. So let’s make it an opportunity to really reshape and remake what it means to be a Twin,” López said.