Duffey, who was actually suspended for that game, watched from afar as his teammates walloped Cleveland 10-0, thanks to a nine-run fourth inning and a scoreless six-inning outing from pitcher Randy Dobnak, who will start again on Friday when the Twins welcome the Royals into town.
“Everyone kind of looks at each other and you just know, ‘Yeah, we’re all tired. We all feel terrible. Let’s play baseball,’ ” Duffey said. “And ultimately that’s what we’re here to do, and I think sometimes you need to take the thinking out of it. … I think sometimes taking the brain out of the way and just letting the body take over, that works, and I think we’re hitting that good stride right now.”
While the exact moment things started to shift for the Twins (20-29) is hard to pin down, and answers vary from person to person, the Twins have been filled with optimism of late after winning their past four games and six of their past seven.
Manager Rocco Baldelli couldn’t keep it to just one thing when asked what he was most encouraged by over the past week — it’s starters going out there and pitching deeper into games, getting the team through an extra inning. It’s the bullpen stepping up. It’s the offense simplifying things and getting big hits when the team needs them.
“These are team efforts,” he stressed.
And this is how the Twins will need to play to get themselves out of the hole they’ve created.
The Twins are near the beginning of a highly favorable portion of their schedule. After sweeping three games from Baltimore, the team with the American League’s worst record, they now face the Royals for three games at home before heading to Baltimore and Kansas City to play those two teams again.
Of their next 24 games, only six — three at home against the Yankees, three against the Astros in Houston — will come against teams that entered Wednesday with records above .500.
Simply put, the matchups are favorable and the time to make up ground is now.
“Once you get off to the start we’ve gotten off to, or had gotten off to prior to this more recent run of play and a little bit better baseball, you set yourself back. You know that. You’ve dug yourself a hole,” Twins president of baseball operations Derek Falvey said. “… We know we need to punch above our weight for a period of time to get back to where we need to be. There’s no running from that.”
The recent run of better baseball has come at a time when the Twins are playing without key pieces of their roster, chief among them center fielder Byron Buxton, who was playing at an MVP level before straining his hip. Utility man Luis Arraez was placed on the injured list on Wednesday. Pitcher Kenta Maeda was placed on the IL days earlier.
Jorge Polanco, Max Kepler and Nelson Cruz dealt with ailments of their own over the past week. Injuries have skyrocketed around the league, and the Twins certainly aren’t alone, nor do they want to make excuses about it.
But Falvey admitted it has been “challenging to not see the full complement at the same time all playing,” an issue that has plagued the Twins since the very first game of the season when third baseman Josh Donaldson strained his hamstring.
“Your record is your record. You are where you are in that moment,” Falvey said. “Whatever has happened at that point, it is what it is. You have to reflect that. You can’t just shirk that and pretend it doesn’t matter (because) you think your team is better. We still do feel the talent. When we are healthy and playing the way we should, we should see more baseball like we’ve seen of late.”
That record — nine games under .500 — is still far from where they need it to be. But the Twins believe that what they’ve seen the past week is more representative of who they are than what they saw during all of April and most of May.
Now, they have to prove it — and then keep proving it.
“Our guys are able to use everything that’s happened early this year as motivation going forward,” Baldelli said. “And proving, not to ourselves, we know who we are, but to prove it every day, and go out there and prove that what we were doing and the way we were playing early on is not the true nature of this group. The support and the work ethic and the character of everybody here is what’s ultimately, I think, going to win out. And I think we’re seeing that first-hand right now as we’re playing these games.”
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Twins feel like 'we're hitting that good stride right now' - Pine Journal
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