Twins are in meltdown mode

Unquestionably the Twins biggest series of the season looms in Cleveland this weekend.

And the Twins look like a team that knows the roof is about to completely cave in.

They finished off another bad series in another bad post-ASG homestand by watching Kyle Gibson be Kyle Gibson, and by delivering another largely lifeless offensive performance(aside from a mini rally late) in a loss to Washington.

And it's no longer just the on field performances that are the problem, but also who is not even on the field in the first place.

The Twins are having an injury onslaught unseen in these parts since the 2016 Vikings. Buxton was already out, but his season officially ended this week. But also Kepler is hurt. And Sano is hurt. And Marwin Gonzalez might as well be on Mars for all we've heard from him. Jake Cave is out. Adrianza got hurt tonight. Cruz missed games this homestand. The cumulative effect has been devastating. What's left of this lineup on any given night is just terrible. The Yankees have surged past them in homeruns, but the greater issue is that the team can barely get above 2 or 3 runs a night. Other than Garver and maybe Cruz, none of the regulars are doing anything. This team has never been good at manufacturing runs, so now that the bombas have become scarce they are helpless.

And Rocco Baldelli is in way over his head. I'm still stewing over that pseudo forfeit last Sunday, where he.let Ryan Lamarre hit with the game on the line, after rolling out a.white flag lineup to begin with.
Then tonight he lets Gibson shit the bed for 5 innings. Then, with the game still theoretically within reach at 6-3, trots out Kohl Stewart for some absurd reason, and watches that former 1st round bust give up 4 runs and end the game for all intents and purposes. That little rally they had late would have mattered if they weren't down SEVEN runs thanks to our genius skipper.

A good manager does not do shit like this. Honestly, Rocco's whole act has blown up in his face. His little tricks to keep players healthy has failed. His mismanagement of pitchers has cost us many games. His refusal to treat some of these games lately like they matter at all is infuriating. He is managing like this team has a 10 game lead and we're just fine tuning for October.

But now we enter this Cleveland series with this entire season very much on the line. 3 1/2 game lead. So the Twins can't leave Cleveland in 2nd, but there is very little hope the Twins will be able to do anything more than maybe win 1 of 3.

From there it's 2 final weeks of White Sox/Royals/Tigers, but we have already blown a lot of games to those teams at full strength. And they may be FORCED to win at least 10 of those 13 games. And this team couldn't win 10 of 13 against the St. Paul Saints right now.

Forget any talk of October. This team is officially in grave danger of not even seeing October.

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