Could A Fully-Healthy Twins Team Compete With the Yankees?

Shortly after the New York Yankees beat the Minnesota Twins 5-0 at Target Field, Byron Buxton started his second day of rehab across the river. Seeing Buxton in a St. Paul Saints jersey will cause your vision to blur. He’s a hare among tortoises at CHS Field. Buxton belongs in a major-league ballpark, breaking the light-sound barrier as he chases down fly balls.

The Twins miss Buxton. On Tuesday, Willi Castro committed an error on a routine fly ball in the first inning and misplayed two other balls. He forgot how many outs there were on Wednesday. The typically reliable Castro can play all over the field and was hitting .266/.329/.441 entering Thursday’s game.

“Stuff like that's going to happen sometimes,” said Castro. “You never know when something like that's going to happen, but…I know I've got to be more aware. I know it's not going to happen again. Yeah, it's great to be back, and obviously, some people thought I was probably not going to play today. But I think probably with the way I've been playing, that's probably why I'm playing [today].”

Castro has value as a utility player. However, he’s stretched as a full-time center fielder and is no match for Buxton. It’s like comparing a Honda to a hypercar. Still, Castro’s defense isn’t Minnesota’s only problem. Ryan Jeffers led off Tuesday’s game with a home run, and they haven’t scored since.

“No one’s ever going to explain that,” said Baldelli. “That one needs to float away somewhere and disappear. Today, of the three days, today was the day we did the least offensively. Runs, I guess we only scored one. But the first two days, we actually banged the ball a handful of times pretty good around the ballpark and got nothing to show for it. Today, I can’t say that.”

Royce Lewis was in the clubhouse throughout the weekend and says he is not experiencing pain from the quadriceps injury he sustained on opening day. Lewis is working on baserunning and hitting, and he could return in June. Adding a career .313/.369/.564 hitter who hit four grand slams would help the offense.

Still, the Twins need some internal improvement from their hitters after failing to score for 26 straight innings. Carlos Santana is hitting .207/.279/.393; Edouard Julien, .229/.340/.435. Alex Kirilloff (.207/.268/.369) entered Thursday’s game in a 2-for-30 (.067) slump. You wouldn’t know there was a league-wide offensive slump the way the Yankees pitched. However, Carlos Correa said that Minnesota’s hitters can be more productive.

"It had more to do with our approach and our collective at-bats,” said Correa. “They pitched well. But I feel like the way we've been playing, the way we've been swinging, and the way we had a collective approach the past three, four weeks, I think it would have been a different story, and we didn't do that. So kudos to them. It looked like they pitched great. I think we've got to do better as a team."

Add in that Chris Paddack gave up a career-worst 12 hits, Pablo López relinquished 10, and the Twins played poor defense behind them, and you have the formula for a sweep.

“We were pretty far off this series for three straight days,” said Rocco Baldelli. “We came into this series off of a month of pretty spectacular play all the way around. I didn’t kind of recognize much of what I was watching over the last three days. Nothing’s also going to feel really good or competitive when you don’t score any runs over a three-game series.

“It’s also hard to get stuff going, and it’s hard to get too excited about anything going on when you can’t string together baserunners and get something going. We got pitched tough. We clearly did not do close to enough offensively, but we have to forget about it. We actually have to move on. We have to get ready for our next series and not dwell on anything that we just witnessed. No one in our clubhouse kind of recognizes what just went on over the last 27 innings.”

The Twins believe they’re one of the best teams in the American League. They went 7-13 in their first 20 games and 17-3 in the next 20 before playing the Yankees. They’ve salvaged their season. Minnesota enters its three-game series road series with the Cleveland Guardians in a three-team race for the AL Central. The Twins have accomplished a lot this season, but they need to be able to compete with New York to go anywhere in the junior circuit.