Twins-Astros Game 2: One Humiliation Too Far

Astros 3

Twins 1

The playoff losing streak that will never end hits 18.

Facing not just the continuation of the most ridiculous losing streak that has ever been, but the indignity of being swept at home in the playoffs by a sub-.500 team, the Minnesota Twins dug deep, gathered all their collective will to win and....gave the same garbage effort as they did in game 1 and got swept.

I'm so over this franchise. 

All Twins playoff games FEEL like reruns, but this one really was. 

Again we had the Twins loading the bases in the 1st only to not score.

Again we had the bats do NOTHING the rest of the game.

Again we had a starting pitcher give exactly the kind of start you want and need, only to get no run support and get pulled early for no reason. 

Again we had easy first guess bullpen management mistakes that led to the winning runs.

And so again a Twins season goes down the drain.

Rocco Baldelli has done one thing for sure in 2 seasons of playoff failure. He has made me appreciate Ron Gardenhire. Gardy was at the helm for still the majority of this losing streak, but at least his teams competed most of the time.

The disgusting lack of effort at the plate will be the biggest takeaway from this series.

Kenta Maeda and today Jose Berrios did everything you could want. 1 run over a combined 10 innings. And the so-called Bomba Squad failed them. 2 runs in 2 games. Only 7 hits and only one a double. No home runs. Hell, they never even hit one to the warning track. Just one lazy pop up or harmless flyball after another.

Rocco Baldelli also failed our starters. Taking Berrios out today after 5 innings and barely 70 pitches was absolutely maddening. Berrios stepped up and was pitching one of the best games of his life in the biggest game of his life. And his reward? A quick hook so Rocco could put in Cody Stashak.

Rocco is a terrible big game manager. That much is clear already. I don't understand a thing he did with the pitching staff these two games. Why does he give Stashak a 2nd inning when he didn't for May yesterday? And why did he use Taylor Rogers in the 9th when Rogers is especially bad pitching back to back days? 

Well, Stashak in his 2nd inning gave up a go ahead homerun. And Rogers came in and immediately gave up 3 straight hits for the obligatory insurance run.

And why use Rogers when Duffey was ready and you had spent multiple inning warming up Jake Odorizzi?

And why, after Cruz walks in the 8th and you pinch run Buxton (not starting due obviously to concussion symptoms, although Rocco was bizarrely secretive about it) do you not make any effort to steal and instead give Jake Cave an entire at bat (like 7 pitches) to strike out and leave Buxton at first? To seal the Twins fate, Buxton was then picked off. Because no Twins playoff loss is truly complete without a baserunning blunder.

I don't know what is left that can be done for this franchise to escape this purgatory. The streak spans at least 3 cores (the early 2000s Hunter era, the Mauer/Morneau era, and now the Sano/Buxton/Rosario/Kepler era), 3 managers, 3 general managers, 2 stadiums, and 16 years. 

You can't even say "well maybe if we add this player or change this part of the roster or do this or do that." This curse is bigger than any one player or coach. It's bigger than the Yankees. I was an idiot. I really did believe that if we just avoided the Yankees this ungodly streak would be over. 

I was wrong. The curse is not the New York Yankees. The curse is the Minnesota Twins. This is a loser franchise. Forget 87 and 91. Those were a lifetime ago. This franchise is trash. 

For years the Twins were content to just be the plucky little underdog from the midwest with the small payroll, who once in a while would pop up and win a division only to then get creamed in the playoffs. And everyone would.pat them.on the head and tell them how good they did and how proud everyone was of them.

Even as this streak grew the patronizing continued. Even as Target Field opened and the payroll grew the Twins still portrayed themselves as the plucky little underdog. The team that has no real drive to be one of the big boys. The team that is just happy to be there.

This mentality has ingrained itself into this franchise so much that the spotlight still makes them shrink every time. The moment is ALWAYS too big for them. It always will be.

Well I am done investing emotionally in a franchise that wilts like this, that always folds in the playoffs, that can't even be bothered to give their fans something to be proud of. 

Division title flags don't cut it. When I see '06, '09, '10, or '19 all I see are years the team stopped playing once the regular season ended (well, that 2009 team at least made the Yankees work for that sweep). And when they have one up there reading " '20" it will be even more hollow, not just because it was a 60 game season but because the team that won it then gave the worst effort yet against the worst team they will ever face in a playoff series (unless this lousy format stays).

So I am done. The Twins, my first sports love, have broken me. I am done investing emotionally in this franchise anymore. Because I know there will never be any kind of payoff. This franchise will always be a loser. Oh sure, they will continue to have good regular seasons (they are set up to have good seasons for years to come), but I no longer have any hope they can win in the playoffs, let alone stop this losing streak that makes me embarrassed to be a fan at all.