It’s mid-September and the Twins are clinging by their fingernails to a playoff spot.
They have ushered the injured Byron Buxton and Carlos Correa back into the fold, essentially saying we can’t wait any longer for you to be 100% healthy. Just come back now.
They just dumped relief pitcher Jorge Alcala, who had an ERA of 1.60 in early August, in favor of a different pitcher another contending team didn’t want. When lefty Cole Irvin makes a start mere days after being a waiver claim from Baltimore, don’t be surprised.
You can either say, “Wow, the Twins are desperate” or “at least they are trying something” and neither one would be wrong.
You can say, “the data suggests the Twins still have a 76.4% chance of making the playoffs” while also saying “my gut tells me it’s a 0.0% chance” and again it wouldn’t feel wrong. That latter feeling intensified when the Twins couldn’t hold a late lead in a loss to Cleveland on Monday, something I talked about on the Daily Delivery podcast.
You can say tonight, and/or each of the final 12 games of the regular season, feels like the most important one the Twins will play.
But there, you might be wrong. Because there’s at least a pretty good chance that the most important game of the Twins’ season has already come and gone, having been played on a rather unassuming late July afternoon.
On July 28, Bailey Ober was masterful in throwing eight shutout innings of one-hit ball in Detroit. The Twins tacked on some late insurance runs and cruised to a 5-0 victory. The Twins improved to 58-46, while the Tigers fell to 52-55, a full 7½ games behind Minnesota and an afterthought in a crowded wild card race.
