At the worst possible time of the season, the Minnesota Twins are reverted back to the absolute worst version of themselves.
The Twins have only managed to win six of their last 20 games, and have mustered up just three wins so far this month. It's been a horrific stretch, with the team getting outscored 21-8 over the last five games including two shutout losses to the Kansas City Royals.
Kansas City swept Minnesota over the weekend, sinking the Twins further down the playoff standings and pushing them to the brink of being on the outside looking in. It's an epic collapse, one that will likely have dire consequences assuming it doesn't cost ownership any money, and it might be that we still haven't yet reached the bottom.
Updated AL Wild Card standings after Twins lose 6-2 to Angles
In the span of a few weeks, Twins fans have gone from wondering about the team's magic number to looking in the rearview at teams chasing them down in the Wild Card standings.
Team | Record | GB |
|---|---|---|
New York Yankees | 82-63 | +5.5 |
Kansas City Royals | 79-66 | +2.5 |
Minnesota Twins | 76-68 | -- |
Detroit Tigers | 73-71 | 3.0 |
Boston Red Sox | 73-71 | 3.0 |
Seattle Mariners | 73-71 | 3.0 |
We're quickly approaching the technicality phase of the Twins meltdown, as Minnesota is quickly falling out of the running but has a few Get Out Of Jail Free cards left to play.
After losing to the Angels on Monday, the Twins are just three games ahead of the Tigers for the final Wild Card spot. It's technically a four game lead, as Minnesota owns what is now an important tiebreaker over Detroit. The same goes for Seattle, the other team on Minnesota's heels, as the Twins won the season series against the Mariners and would finish ahead of them in the event of a tie.
Minnesota also controls the season series with the Red Sox, but has three more games against Boston that could swing things the other way.
None of that should make anyone feel good, though. It's not like the Tigers and Mariners are surging and keeping pace with the Twins; Minnesota is trending so hard in the wrong direction that we're looking at tiebreaker scenarios over a third place and one that fired its manager just a few weeks ago.
That's the state of things with the Twins right now, and it's getting to the point where it might be better if the team misses the postseason entirely. Ownership's greed forced the sort of roster construction that resulted in a cataclysmic collapse in the final stretch of the season, and there's nothing about the team that gives anyone confidence that a trip to the playoffs would end any other way than the Twins being sacrificial participants.
More Minnesota Twins news and rumors