Week in Review: Returning to Rock Bottom

The Weekly Nutshell:
It's honestly just hard to comprehend. I know the 2025 Minnesota Twins are not this bad. We saw what they are capable of when they went 18-8 in a month of May that included a 13-game winning streak. This is a team that, according to both projection models and betting lines, was at least a co-favorite in the AL Central heading into the season, and at times they have looked like it. Competency was the baseline expectation here.

But over the past couple of weeks, much like the first few, the Twins have resembled one of the worst teams you will ever witness on a major-league field. It's not just the losing, which has been relentless. It's how they're losing: fumbling and failing in every phase of the game, committing mind-boggling blunders on a regular basis and being blatantly outclassed by their opponents. Minnesota's formerly elite pitching staff has dissolved into disaster, the offense remains woefully inadequate, and at a simple fundamental level, this team has been nothing short of disgraceful. 

After dropping five of six for a second consecutive week, once again getting blown out multiple times, the Twins have sunk back below the .500 mark and into fourth place. This is a club that does neither the big things nor the little things well, and whose biggest strength has been transformed into a glaring weakness, leaving them with little leg left to stand on. 

As we approach July and the trade deadline, the Twins are looking like sellers and cellar-dwellers. Heading into another challenging stretch of the schedule, they've demonstrated no ability to stop the bleeding or redirect their fate. Disheartening doesn't even begin to describe it. But it's not too late yet.

Weekly Snapshot: Mon, 6/16 through Sun, 6/22
***
Record Last Week: 1-5 (Overall: 37-40)
Run Differential Last Week: -17 (Overall: -10)
Standing: 4th Place in AL Central (11.0 GB) 

Last Week's Game Results:

Game 72 | CIN 6, MIN 5: Bullpen Forfeits Late Lead, Twins Lose By One Again

• Stewart: 0.2 IP, 3 H, 2 ER, L

Game 73 | CIN 4, MIN 2: Rain-Shortened Snoozer Leads to Sixth Straight Loss

• Ober: 5.2 IP, 9 H, 4 ER

Game 74 | MIN 12, CIN 5: Lineup Unleashes at Last as Losing Streak Snaps

• Buxton: 3-6, 2 HR

Game 75 | MIL 17, MIN 6: Brewers Bash Twins into Submission in Total Debacle

• Twins pitching: 19 H allowed

Game 76 | MIL 9, MIN 0: New Lows Reached in a Messy, Miserable Performance

• Twins offense: 4 H, 1 XBH

Game 77 | MIL 9, MIN 8: Comeback Falls Short After Pitching Gets Pounded Again

• Festa: 4.2 IP, 12 H, 8 ER, 3 BB

IF YOU'D RATHER LISTEN TO THE WEEK IN REVIEW THAN READ IT, YOU CAN GET IT IN AUDIO FORM! FIND THE LATEST EPISODE ON OUR PODCAST PAGE, AS WELL AS ON APPLE AND SPOTIFY. SUBSCRIBE TO OUR CHANNELS SO YOU DON'T MISS OUT!

NEWS & NOTES

This was actually an uncommonly quiet week on the roster and injury front, which is altogether welcome news. The Twins made zero MLB transactions over the past seven days, avoiding any new injuries while continuing to play the waiting game on recovering players like Pablo López, Zebby Matthews and Royce Lewis (none of whom are particularly close to returning).

There were however a few noteworthy developments on the farm. Austin Martin, who has missed most of the first half due to multiple hamstring injuries, started a rehab assignment in the Florida Complex League on Saturday. He's got some catching up to do after all the missed time, but this is the first step toward working his way back and potentially factoring in for the big-league club during the second half. Meanwhile top prospect Emmanuel Rodriguez, who's been sidelined for almost all of June in Triple-A with a hip injury, also started at rehab in the FCL. Certainly a name worth watching as the Twins grow increasingly desperate for a jolt of life.

HIGHLIGHTS

Byron Buxton is the main attraction for Twins fans, and really the lone attraction right now. Buxton was seeing red in Cincinnati, clubbing four home runs in three games while also adding a double and striking out just twice in 14 plate appearances. He added two more home runs on Sunday against the Brewers, pushing his season total to 17 as he charges toward a second career All-Star appearance. Buxton has seven home runs in his past 10 games and is slugging .575 on the year, fourth-best in baseball behind Aaron Judge, Cal Raleigh and Shohei Ohtani. 

The premier power is of course awesome to see, but Buxton's materializing patience is perhaps even more intriguing than the hot swing. He drew four more walks in six games last week, and now has 12 in June with only 10 strikeouts. It's a remarkable spike in a discipline, and we'll see how long it can sustain. Buxton is legitimately playing at an MVP-caliber level right now.

No one else on the Twins can come close to such a characterization – thus all the losing in spite of Buxton's brilliance – but there have been a handful of solid performers. Ryan Jeffers joined Buxton in having a monster series against the Reds, tallying four hits – including a homer and a double – with four RBIs in just one-and-a-half games. He added another home run against Milwaukee on Sunday, his sixth. 

Brooks Lee saw his hitting streak end at 19 games with an 0-for-4 on Saturday, but bounced back with a four-hit game on Sunday, helping to make up for some truly atrocious defensive play in the infield. (For the record, I remain extremely skeptical of Lee's impact potential until he develops a semblance of power or patience, neither of which were on display in a week where seven of his eight hits were singles and he drew one walk against six strikeouts.)

LOWLIGHTS

The most glaring low point of the week, and really one of the most pitiful moments I can remember as a Twins fan, was watching Jonah Bride come out to pitch on Friday for a fourth time in the span of 15 days. It came at the end of another non-competitive blowout loss in which the Twins lineup was carved up by a 23-year-old who took a perfect game into the seventh, and the pitching staff was pummeled for 17 runs on 19 hits. 

Bride did his part to put the game thoroughly out of reach, allowing five runs in his one inning of work, but plenty of actual pitchers played their own roles. Joe Ryan was okay, allowing three runs in 5 ⅓ innings before the floodgates opened on the underbelly of the Twins bullpen. Justin Topa got clobbered for five earned runs while recording only one out. Joey Wentz followed by surrendering four earned runs in 1 ⅓. 

Friday marked the fifth time in 14 games that Twins pitchers allowed double-digit runs, after doing so zero times in their first 61 games. They came just short of adding a sixth and seventh when they allowed nine runs on Saturday and Sunday. What once felt like the biggest reason to believe in the Twins now feels like the biggest barrier to having any faith whatsoever. You can't win games if you can't get people out and that has far too often been the case for a pitching staff that is totally imploding here in the month of June, where the Twins are 6-14.

When the pitchers aren't staking opponents to untouchable leads, they are too frequently coming up short in crucial spots. That led to a third consecutive one-run loss on Tuesday, in the opener against the Reds, with Brock Stewart giving up a devastating two-run double to TJ Friedl just after the Twins had managed to steal away a lead from Cincinnati. Stewart's letdown — admittedly a rare one from a pitcher who's been mostly been very good — came on the heels of Jhoan Durán and Cole Sands giving up back-to-back walk-offs in Houston. Everywhere you look, guys just aren't getting it done.

That includes the entire rotation, which continues to look very underwhelming in the absence of López and Matthews. In six games last week, Twins starters posted a 6.82 ERA over 30 ⅓ innings, with not one genuinely impressive outing. At this point there's no reason to feel much confidence in anyone aside from Ryan. On Sunday, David Festa gave up eight earned runs for the second time in four starts since being recalled from the minors, casting serious doubt on his readiness to succeed in the big leagues. The Twins have no choice but to stick with him, as their rotation depth suffered another crushing blow over the weekend when Andrew Morris was placed on the IL in Triple-A with a forearm strength. The reinforcements have run dry and the current mix is cratering.

Offensively, the Twins ended the week on somewhat of a high note, churning out eight runs in an effort to erase another massive deficit from the pitching staff, but for the most part there was little to like outside of Buxton's heroics. Even in a game like Sunday's, where the lineup could have been poised to overcome another abhorrent showing from the staff, there were too many letdowns and missed opportunities to declare a success. 

Thirteen of Minnesota's 18 hits were singles, including all four from Carlos Correa, who is slugging .353 since last homering on May 30th. The Twins hit four home runs in the game but three came with the bases empty. They went 3-for-12 with runners in scoring position and stranded 13 men on base in a one-run loss. Trevor Larnach watched strike three sail over the middle of the plate with two outs in the ninth and the tying run in scoring position. It all speaks to how broken this ballclub is. Even on a good day, they're pretty bad.

Which brings me to the final and most egregious blemish on the Twins' performance: defense and fundamentals. Over the past week, Rocco Baldelli's club has played the kind of baseball that would make a little league coach shake their head in disbelief. 

Lee, son of a coach and a heralded "baseball IQ" guy, failed to run out a dropped third strike to end Saturday’s game, even as it skipped far from the plate. He then followed up with a comedy of errors at third base on Sunday, booting back-to-back plays that belied his defensive rep. Correa, whose sure-handed glove has been the only redeeming quality of a lackluster campaign, lost a pop-up in partly-cloudy conditions and let it drop. Jeffers launched a throw into center field on a steal attempt, scoring a run. Willi Castro forgot how many outs there were and didn’t turn a double play that should’ve been automatic. (Was that last week or the week before? I honestly can't even remember.)

These are not bad breaks or moments of misfortune; they are mental lapses and execution failures that reflect a team completely out of sync. Don't take my word for it.

“You want to sum it up in one word, it’s embarrassing,” Jeffers admitted after Saturday's game. “We’re big league ballplayers and we’re not playing like a big league ballclub.” That accountability is appreciated, but for fans watching this sloppy, dismal display — the very brand of uninspired ball that defined the team’s miserable early-season funk — it’s maddening to see history repeating itself. The truth is becoming harder to deny with each gaffe and mounting loss: this is probably no mere slump. This might just be who the Twins are, at least under their current leadership. Given all that's taken place surrounding it, that 13-game winning streak in May increasingly looks like the fluke.

TRENDING STORYLINE

Down in Triple-A, Edouard Julien has begun to heat up at last. He consistently struggled to find any kind of power stroke in the minors or majors during the first two and a half months of the season, but turned a corner last week in St. Paul's series against the Toledo Mud Hens. In six games, Julien went 9-for-23 with three home runs and six RBIs, also drawing six walks. In his first 36 games at Triple-A following the early-May demotion, he had two homers and 11 RBIs. 

To be clear: This is a very small sample and no one is denying that. Possibly Julien has just run into a bit of a random hot streak rather than unlocking substantive improvements that will translate to the major-league level. But this is a striking outburst, and it's not like Julien is an unproven hitter. He's showing a lot of confidence in the box right now. We'll take that.

Another name to watch in Triple-A is Aaron Sabato, the 2020 first-round draft pick who faded from prospect relevance after failing to distinguish himself in the low minors. But the 26-year-old first baseman is enjoying a breakthrough season and was recently promoted to the Saints, where he's already catching eyes with his loud contact and evolved plate approach. 

Sabato, even more than Julien, should be viewed through a lens of small-sample skepticism. He's played all of nine games at Triple-A and had fallen completely off the radar entering this year, with good cause. To even ponder the idea of a big-league promotion feels like an overreaction, which is also true of Julien to a degree.

But, we are at the point where overreactions need to be strongly considered, even in the form of a nominal shakeup to unsettle the stifling status quo. One big problem with this Twins offense, beyond the injuries and slumps and Correa disappointment, is that there are three position players on the roster who have legitimately almost no chance of doing anything at the plate. It's no coincidence Buxton has hit six straight solo homers when you consider that the ninth spot in the order is so often occupied by someone like Christian Vázquez, Bride or DaShawn Keirsey Jr.

Vázquez isn't going anywhere, but Keirsey Jr. probably should and Bride absolutely should be gone yesterday. His utility to the roster as an oft-used mop-up man on the mound has become a sad joke, and when it comes to contributing in the ways he's actually supposed to, Bride has been a huge negative.

If the Twins are going to start playing like a big league ballclub, as Jeffers urged, then it's past time to start purging the non-big league ballplayers from the roster. 

LOOKING AHEAD

Things get no easier. The Twins are going to have a heck of a time trying to escape this death spiral, with seven games against quality competition on tap. First the Mariners travel to Target Field for a four-game series, subjecting the lineup to some very high-quality right-handed pitching (all the more reason to give a Julien a look), and then it's off to Detroit for three games against the MLB-leading Tigers. Detroit has widened its advantage over Minnesota in the division to 11 games, and the Twins are at great risk of seeing that number grow even further in the coming week.

The more pertinent concern at this point, though, is losing ground to a wild-card contending team like Seattle. The division is quickly beginning to look out of reach, but the postseason isn't. As bleak as things are right now, vibes can shift quickly and we've seen it happen all too many times over the past few seasons. As long as they can hang within range of the .500 mark, the Twins — poised to potentially resurge in the second half as key injured players return — can't be counted out.

That said, the clock is ticking and the reality of the looming trade deadline is unignorable. If the Twins determine by mid-to-late July that contention isn't viable for this season, it would simply be irresponsible to stand still and wait around for things to get better. If this is really what this team is, then its time to start taking it apart. 

We're not quite there yet. But unless the freefalling Twins can't find a way to steal some unlikely victories against the Mariners and Tigers in these next seven days, those conversations are by necessity going to need to start taking center stage. 

MONDAY, JUNE 23: MARINERS @ TWINS — RHP Bryan Woo v. RHP Bailey Ober
TUESDAY, JUNE 24: MARINERS @ TWINS — RHP Luis Castillo v. RHP Chris Paddack
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 25: MARINERS @ TWINS — RHP George Kirby v. RHP Joe Ryan
THURSDAY, JUNE 26: MARINERS @ TWINS — RHP Emerson Hancock v. RHP Simeon Woods Richardson
FRIDAY, JUNE 27: TWINS @ TIGERS — RHP David Festa v. RHP Sawyer Gipson-Long
SATURDAY, JUNE 28: TWINS @ TIGERS — RHP Bailey Ober vs Casey Mize
SUNDAY, JUNE 29: TWINS @ TIGERS — RHP Chris Paddack v. LHP Tarik Skubal