{"id":272473,"date":"2023-05-22T14:30:58","date_gmt":"2023-05-22T19:30:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/?p=272473"},"modified":"2023-05-22T14:30:59","modified_gmt":"2023-05-22T19:30:59","slug":"clutch-issues-persist-through-end-of-twins-trip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/?p=272473","title":{"rendered":"Clutch issues persist through end of Twins’ trip"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

ANAHEIM — For the majority of Sunday\u2019s game against the Angels, Pablo L\u00f3pez<\/a> went toe to toe with Shohei Ohtani. And as the starting pitchers have done so frequently this season, he put the Twins in position to win.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But throughout a tough road trip through Southern California, the cracks that led to the Twins\u2019 struggles in 2022 and early inconsistency this season continued to resurface, with challenges in situational hitting and high-leverage relief situations contributing to all four of their losses to the Dodgers and Angels in a 2-4 road trip capped by a 4-2 loss<\/a> at Angel Stadium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA play each game deciding the game could have won a vast majority of these games, if not all of them,\u201d manager Rocco Baldelli said. \u201cWe were in every single ballgame and we had our chances. We need to do better with all of these chances.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That seems to have been a common refrain in most of Minnesota\u2019s losses this season, with its continued penchant for playing close games magnifying those issues and causing them to swing games. Here are three of the problems that plagued the Twins on this road trip — and what they can do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bases loaded<\/strong>
The Twins\u2019 baffling struggles with the bases loaded have gotten to the point where Baldelli brought them up, unprompted, following their series-finale loss<\/a> to the Dodgers on Wednesday, when they loaded the bases with none out in a tie game in the sixth and couldn\u2019t push a run across.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe bases-loaded thing, I don\u2019t have an answer for the bases-loaded conversation, for anyone thinking about asking that question,\u201d Baldelli said. \u201cI don\u2019t think anyone does.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It flared up again on Sunday. Ohtani was pulled from a 1-1 game after allowing two hits in six innings, and the Twins immediately loaded the bases with one out in the seventh. Reyes Moronta struck out Ryan Jeffers on a pitch that appeared off the plate — and Chris Devenski whiffed Joey Gallo to end the threat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Angels swung the momentum on Mickey Moniak\u2019s two-run double in the bottom of the frame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Twins are 5-for-43 (.116) with no extra-base hits with the bases loaded this season, which is even less explicable considering they have an .871 OPS with men in scoring position, third best in the Majors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got to try to maybe have a simpler approach with people on base and try to back up the baseball a little better, go the other way, just take a single instead of trying to do a lot of damage,\u201d Carlos Correa said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bullpen<\/strong>
The Twins were tied or led in the seventh inning or later in all four losses on this road trip, and there was no single culprit, as the team\u2019s entire high-leverage corps — Jhoan Duran, Jorge L\u00f3pez<\/a> and Griffin Jax — all got hit at various points, in addition to the grand slam allowed by Emilio Pag\u00e1n late Wednesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Sunday, the tough outing came from Jorge L\u00f3pez, who allowed back-to-back doubles in relief of Pablo L\u00f3pez, including the two-run knock by Moniak. Jorge L\u00f3pez also walked in the walk-off run in the 12th inning on Monday against the Dodgers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cStill angry about it,\u201d Jorge L\u00f3pez said. \u201cIt’s my job to fix that. It was a really good game that Pablo was going through. I couldn’t do the job.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part of fixing this will simply be getting healthy, as the injured Caleb Thielbar occupied a key position, and the bullpen has been stretched even more due to Jax\u2019s recent struggles. Brock Stewart\u2019s emergence should help, and Jovani Moran has gained experience in high-leverage spots — but the Twins simply need Jorge L\u00f3pez and Jax to pitch through it until they\u2019re in position to make additions at the Trade Deadline.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ANAHEIM — For the majority of Sunday\u2019s game against the Angels, Pablo L\u00f3pez went toe to toe with Shohei Ohtani. And as the starting pitchers have done so frequently this season, he put the Twins in position to win. But throughout a tough road trip through Southern California, the cracks that led […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":272399,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-272473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=272473"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":272474,"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272473\/revisions\/272474"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/272399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=272473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=272473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=272473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}