3 Twins that deserve blame after 6-4 loss to Astros in ALDS Game 1

After rolling through the AL Wild Card and to the team's first playoff win in 18 attempts, the Minnesota Twins hit some turbulance in Houston.

This was to be expected, as the Astros are defending World Series champions and built to destroy other team's dreams in the postseason. There's a reason Houston has only missed the playoffs once since 2015 and have won a pair of World Series in the last nine years -- they're really good.

Baltimore might be the No. 1 seed in the American League, but Houston is the real problem for everyone left standing.

Minnesota is the first line of defense against the Astros getting back to the World Series, and Game 1 did not go the way fans were hoping it might. The Twins were able to battle back from a 5-0 hole and show the type of fight that gives fans hope things can turn around, but mistakes all over the place ended up costing them in the opener.

The Twins played well against Toronto, but caught some lucky breaks that helped them sail to victory. They'll need those breaks and more against Houston, and the team got a heavy dose of how slim the margin for error will be in the ALDS.

3 Twins to blame after 1-0 loss to Astros in ALDS Game 1

Eduoard Julien

It was a brutal game for one of the Twins best young players. There's no nice way to put it -- Canadian or Minnesota -- Edouard Julien looked like a rookie in every sense on Saturday against the Astros.

Things didn't start off that bad, as he drew a leadoff walk against Justin Verlander and managed to double in his next at-bat. Everything went downhill from there, though, as Julien ruined his own luck with some bad baserunning that very same inning.

Royce Lewis hit into a fielder's choice, but it was Julien who got tagged out rather than Lewis. It seemed that Julien forgot how many outs there were, because he took off on contact from second base and right into Jeremy Pena who had fielded the ball.

Had Julien not run, Pena throws out Lewis at first instead of taking a runner in scoring position off the bases.

In the fifth inning, things hit rock bottom for Julien. He was punked so hard on a 2-2 curveball from Verlander that he lost both his bat and his helmet while flamboyantly striking out.

To be fair, Julien -- much like the Twins in general -- found a way to end things on a higher note than it otherwise seemed. He made a clutch defensive play in the eighth inning to save a run, something that almost outweighs his earlier mistakes given how his glove has always been the thing experts say might hold him back.

Bailey Ober

For the most part, Bailey Ober pitched mostly fine in Game 1, but his mistakes are absolutely massive. Ober only pitched three innings and faced 14 batters, and were it not for three bad pitches he might have been getting pats on the back rather than blamed for the loss.

Ober's three bad pitches were backbreakers. He gave up a home run to Jose Altuve on the very first pitch of the game and then had two pitches in the third inning combine for two more runs. Alex Bregman was hit with a slider that got too far inside which put him on first for Yordan Alvarez, who tattooed a changeup a few pitches later.

Three pitches, three runs.

Two of those pitches were almost identical and produced the exact same result twice. Ober gave Altuve a fastball high in the zone on the first-pitch home run. Two innings later he served up another pitch high in the zone, this time a changeup to Yordan Alvarez who launched it into the right field seats.

Home plate umpire Brian Knight called the first pitch of the Alvarez at-bat a ball, even though it seemed to be a strike that just snuck into the bottom of the zone. It seems likely that Ober overcorrected on his next pitch to go high, which resulted in the home run.

Ober's margin for error was razor thin, and if you take those three mistakes away his day isn't nearly as bad as it seemed. It's hard not to blame him, though, because the work Minnesota's offense did later in the game is painted in a totally different light -- a winning light -- if the mistakes don't happen.