Twins eliminate themselves from playoff contention with dud vs. Orioles

After wasting opportunity after opportunity Thursday night and ultimately losing in 13 innings, the Minnesota Twins entered Friday with just one path to the playoffs: win out and have either the Detroit Tigers or Kansas City Royals lose out.

While the Tigers won and punched their postseason ticket to start the weekend, the Royals gave the Twins a shot by losing their series-opener to Atlanta. The Twins responded by laying an egg and eliminating themselves in a 7-2 loss to the Baltimore Orioles at Target Field.

We’ve noted Minnesota’s lack of effort in recent days as the club showed little interest in any final playoff push. Still, Friday was likely a little extra disturbing for Twins fans to watch, given not only that the Royals lost, but also that it was at the hands of Minnesota’s 2021 third-round pick, Cade Povich, who was sent to Baltimore in the ill-fated Jorge López trade two years ago.

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Minnesota mustered all of two hits off the lefty while Twins ace Pablo López yielded a pair of runs on six hits and three walks, getting no help from his offense.

He finishes his second year in Minnesota with 15-9 with 4.08 ERA and 198 strikeouts over 185.1 innings and 32 games. That’s good production, although down a bit from last season when he had a 3.66 ERA and 234 strikeouts over 194 innings.

Per FanGraphs, his WAR this season of 3.2 is top-25 in the league among pitchers. Last season, he accumulated 4.6 fWAR, 10th in the majors among pitchers.

Next year will be the second of his four-year, $73.5 million extension, and his salary will jump from $8.25 million this season to $21.75 million. That’s currently on track to be the 16th-highest salary for a starter in the majors next season, although offseason free agency could change that.

The bigger issue for the Twins, as the past month-plus has shown, is the rest of the staff, particularly the bullpen. After López exited, Caleb Thielbar allowed a run over 1.1 innings and Kody Funderburk, fresh off the injured list, gave up five hits and four more runs to put the final nail in the Twins’ coffin.

And how about that Minnesota offense? One of the top-five in the majors for much of the season, the Twins have had the second-lowest batting average (.213) and third-worst OPS (.609) in MLB over the past month.

They followed a leadoff walk with back-to-back base hits in the ninth to avoid a shutout but it was far too little, far too late.

The Twins have a lot of questions to answer this offseason. First, they’ll play two meaningless games to finish off a disappointing season.

Rookie Zebby Matthews (1-3, 5.71 ERA) will start Minnesota’s penultimate game of the campaign Saturday night against a yet-to-be-named pitcher for the Orioles. First pitch is scheduled for 6:15 p.m. and will be televised nationally on Fox.