Minneapolis, Minn. – After avoiding a sweep by beating the Detroit Tigers 5-1 on Sunday, the Minnesota Twins welcomed the New York Mets to town and found themselves on the opposite end of the same score.
After losing 5-1 to the Mets on Monday night, the Twins fell to a 5-12 record, tying them for their worst start through 17 games in franchise history.
“On either side of the ball, I don’t have anything overly clever or any one good way to describe it,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said following Monday night’s game. “It was a challenging game on both ends. We didn’t get anything going on the offensive side until the middle of the game.”
Joe Ryan gave the Twins another solid start. He only allowed one run on three hits and struck out eight. However, he gave up his first two walks of the season and threw 101 pitches to get through those five innings. The Mets hitters tagged 24 of Ryan’s 65 strikes for foul balls, chipping away at him to prevent another Twins starter from throwing more than five innings for the fourth game in a row.
“It’s out of our control, I guess,” Ryan said on the outcome of Minnesota’s offense after he left his start. “I think the only thing is it would be nice to have a little more time between innings. I had turned around, gotten my water bottle, and was running back out there real quick. So, a minute or two would be nice.
“I’d say he [Clay Holmes] pitched the ball really well, and I want to say he threw 40 pitches through four innings or something, so he was cruising.”
Monday night, the Twins’ lineup combined to go 3-for-28 against Mets pitchers and were 0-for-3 with runners in scoring position, with their one run coming from a Christian Vazquez sac fly. Since Thursday’s game against the Kansas City Royals, Twins starters have combined to hold opponents to four runs in 25 ⅔ innings pitched, resulting in a 1.40 ERA as a staff.
However, opposing teams are beating up on Minnesota’s bullpen and taking advantage of bad throwing errors from relievers; Justin Topa and Jorge Alcala both had an error throwing to first on Monday. The Twins’ lineup needs to be more productive, but it cannot compensate for all of Minnesota’s mistakes on the field.
“After playing a real nice ball game, you don’t want to see the fundamental element of the game go away,” Baldelli said. “We had two throwing errors. [We] have to avoid these things. We absolutely have to avoid these things.”
What comes next is no clear answer for either Baldelli or Twins shortstop Carlos Correa. Correa was 0-for-4 with a strikeout Monday night and is having another season with a slow start in April. It’s nothing new for Correa, who said after the game that he feels things are falling in place for him at the plate and that his contact just keeps landing into opponents’ gloves.
“I don’t feel bad at the plate, honestly,” Correa said. “I don’t feel like I’m getting overpowered too much, just getting no results, and this game is all about that. Practice has been good. The eyes, I feel like I’m seeing the ball well. I’m just not getting the results I want. I’m not barreling the ball like I want, so I’ll keep working.”
Correa’s bigger concern is seeing the team find a way to work together and get out of this slump. They still have 145 games to go, and Correa said they can’t get fixated on how the scoreboard and stats look in April.
“I know what it takes,” Correa said. “You’ve got to be strong-minded and cannot be focusing on the numbers on the scoreboard right now. Those are not going to be the ones at the end of the year. But at the same time, you’ve got to put in a lot of the work to figure it out because this game is tough. It gets tougher when you’re struggling, and you’ve got to go out there with a positive mind.”
Correa and Baldelli’s messages to the Twins clubhouse are united in their commitment to not letting the frustrations of losing overcome their efforts to break out of another bad start to the season. The Twins recovered from a 7-13 start in 2024 with a 12-game winning streak.
The Twins probably won’t go on another 12-game winning streak. However, whatever any of Minnesota’s hitters can do to break out of their slumps will help them get back on track to compete for the rest of the 2025 season.
“It’s not about whether or not it’s frustrating,” said Baldelli. “It’s whether you let that frustration affect you going forward or not, and we can’t. We can’t allow that to happen. We have to continue to work. You don’t win with frustration; that’s the only thing that can actually stop you from reaching your potential and finding yourself as a hitter.”
