Athletics kick Twins when they’re down, sweep series with 8-3 victory

We’ve reached the helmet-bashing stage of the Twins’ rapidly unraveling season.

Royce Lewis, batting just .199 at Target Field, .175 in August, and .136 during this homestand, was robbed of a potential extra-base hit by A’s left fielder Tyler Soderstrom in the sixth inning Thursday, and took it out on his headwear when he reached the dugout, pounding it several times against the bat rack in frustration.

No doubt he was also acting on behalf of his teammates, who absorbed a lifeless 8-3 loss that completed the Athletics’ first Target Field sweep since 2014.

“I can’t speak for anyone else, but for me, obviously, yeah, I’m frustrated. No one likes losing. I hate it,” Lewis said. “Obviously, we want things to change.”

They’ll have to change things on the road. Having lost six of seven games at home over the past week, the Twins now embark on a weeklong trip to face the last-place White Sox and the first-place Blue Jays, a challenge somewhat similar to the Tigers/A’s homestand they just completed.

With different results, they hope. The Twins, after all, batted only .204 as a team this week, scored an average of 3.4 runs per game in getting outscored 38-24, and went 11-for-67 (.164) with runners in scoring position.

Yeah, that helmet had it coming.

Lewis got a small measure of serenity, perhaps, in the ninth inning, when he again hit a long fly ball to Soderstrom on the warning track. The outfielder fell to the ground as he made the catch, but umpire Dan Iassogna ruled, and a replay challenge confirmed, that the ball had made contact with the wall as Soderstrom fell, turning the catch into a trap. Lewis reached second base, driving in Kody Clemens, for the day’s final run.

“I’m happy for Kody to get the inning started really well. Up the middle [for a single], great at-bat,” Lewis said. “And then mine, I just continued the prayer for a ball to fall.”

Thursday’s finale, before an announced crowd of 21,837 sunbathers, got out of hand early. Starter José Ureña, who hadn’t allowed more than two runs in any of his three previous appearances, let wildness draw him into a six-run second inning. Two walks and a hit batter made Lawrence Butler’s bases-loaded double that much more damaging, and former Twin Brent Rooker followed with an RBI double of his own.

“Two walks and a hit by pitch, it’s hard to pitch around that,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. “Honestly, Ureña has to pound the zone. He knows that, and if he does, he’s going to get ground balls, weak contact. But there were some free baserunners, and it ended up getting to us.”

Ureña didn’t allow another run in his five-inning start, though, stranding four A’s runners. But Michael Tonkin surrendered a pair, starting with the first batter he faced. Rookie Nick Kurtz lined a Tonkin sinker over the center-field wall, ending Tonkin’s seven-inning scoreless streak with his 26th homer of the season. An inning later, Tonkin walked catcher Willi MacIver, who immediately stole second base so he could score on Max Schuemann’s two-out single.

The inning ended, however, when coach Tommy Watkins sent Clemens home on a grounder up the middle. He was easily thrown out at the plate, ending the inning.

It’s been that kind of week.

“This is the first series where we can say we didn’t play the type of baseball we needed to,” Baldelli said. “But we can’t get down on ourselves because we played a rough series. We have to keep at it, keep working and stay focused on the important things and having a good attitude and playing hard.”

Maybe not so hard on the helmets, though.