Twins (Almost) Set Records On Back To Back Nights

There are a lot of great things about baseball. One of those things is a huge comeback. Say, for instance, a team is down nine runs after two innings, and then slowly claws back and wins. Or maybe a team is down eight runs and scores nine to take the lead and win the game. One of the other amazing things about baseball is that by playing it every day, things like that can happen two days in a row.

Or, they can come sooooooooo close to happening two nights in a row and upsettingly not happen either time.

That’s exactly what has just happened to the Minnesota Twins. In the team’s history, they have never come back from more than seven runs down to win. On Wednesday night, they almost came back from a nine-run deficit. They didn’t, as they lost 11-8.

On Thursday the Twins fell behind 8-0, came back to tie it, and then gave up a run in the eighth to lose 9-8.

Put that together, and the Twins were close to setting a team record on two consecutive nights and failed to do so both times.

And, not to be overlooked, both of those games ended in losses. Putting the Twins in a 1-6 spell over the last week. A slump that couldn’t have come at a worse time. Cleveland has done the reverse of Minnesota, going 6-1 over the past week.

That means between when I wrote this optimistic article and when I wrote the pessimistic one you’re currently reading, the Twins went from 1.5 games back in the AL Central to 6.5.

And it’s been pretty much a total system failure, at least in various chunks. Starting pitching was good for the first five games before giving up nine and eight the last two games. The offense was bad for five games until scoring a lot, but not quite enough, the last two games. And the bullpen has been good, but not lights out, making the close games (and pretty much every game has been close) of the week just out of reach.

It’s very disappointing. But as those points help illustrate, this week was very close to being a good week. There’s not much the team could have done about Cleveland’s success in the first six games of the stretch, but they could have done something about their own. Four of the six losses were by one run, another was by two, and the last was by three. You really can’t lose games any closer than that.

So, maybe the lack of success is really just a lack of luck in this case. And maybe, just maybe, that luck will arrive and bring success with it over the next week. And, hey, the Twins have three more with Cleveland. That 6.5 game difference could be a much more manageable 3.5 by weekend’s end. And maybe they’ll set some records along the way too.

Please.