It's going to take a while to sift through the rubble of the Minnesota Twins' season, both because so much happened to cause a historic collapse and it's way to hot to touch at the moment.
Minnesota had an over 90 percent chance to make the playoffs in early-August, and was well on pace to eclipsing its expected win total. What happened over the course of the next month is one of the worst collapses not just in Twins history but in all of baseball.
After blowing a late lead to the Texas Rangers on August 18th, the Twins went on to post the third-worst record in the league and ended up winning just one more game than the Chicago White Sox did in all of September. The bullpen, which was hailed as one of the best before the season, cratered and posted the second-worst ERA and a WPA so bad that it was nearly twice as worst as the next closest team.
It's hard to comprehend just how bad the Twins were and everyone deserves a share of the blame. Ownership set a pathetic tone over the winter by choosing greed over putting together a good team and everything that could go wrong ended up doing so.
Zooming in on the month-long collapse, though, there are a few guys who stick out as having been particularly disappointing by letting everyone down at a time when they were needed the most.
4 Twins who deserve the most blame for the team's embarrassing collapse
Royce Lewis
After talking a big game about how he doesn't slump, Royce Lewis did exactly that from pretty much that point on. We all know how good he can be, but this last month of the season showed Twins fans the ugly flip-side to that coin and it's one we hope to see very little of in the future.
— Baseball Images that Precede Unfortunate Events (@UnfortunateMLB) September 27, 2024
It's been a broken season for Lewis, who is developing a concerning knack for being injured more than he's healthy. He played just three innings on Opening Day, hitting a home run and reaching base again later, and missed the next two months. He hit the IL again later in the summer but was helping power the Twins' offense by hitting .371/.437/.903.
That's when things fell off a cliff.
Lewis has hit a meager .205/.267/.347 from June 2nd on, with just six home runs and none of the blustery swagger that helped give the team an energy to feed off of. His collapse late in the season has been just as disappointing to see, as he's so very clearly one of the most important players on the team but when he can't produce the team feels it.
Minnesota felt his absence on offense when he was out for two months, but the fact that he made that lack of production felt while in the lineup was even worse. He flat out let the Twins down, slumping when Carlos Correa and Byron Buxton were on the IL rather than lifting the team up like the superstar we know he can be.