The Twins left Seattle with a series loss and a step back in the standings, but the trip wasn’t nearly as flat as the record says.
Minnesota lost two of three to the Mariners, dropped back under .500 and slipped out of the Wild Card spot it held for a day. That’s the cold, hard line. But the box score from July 31 through August 2 tells a much louder story: eight home runs, 25 hits, 14 runs, and a lineup that looked far more like its first-half version than the one that had gone quiet for stretches.
Royce Lewis, Trevor Larnach and Luke Keaschall each launched two homers. Brooks Lee and Ryan Jeffers added one apiece.
Three of the Twins’ long balls tied the game. Three came with men on base.
Five arrived in the seventh inning or later. In a ballpark that punishes mistakes and suppresses power, Minnesota kept finding the kind of swings that change games late.
That was the most encouraging part. The Twins kept scrapping, kept pressing opposing bullpens, and kept putting together competitive at-bats in pressure spots. Even in defeat, they were scoring in bunches and making games uncomfortable.
Keaschall, especially, keeps forcing attention. He went 6 for 10 in the series with three RBI, three runs and a walk. He drove in the go-ahead run on Friday, got Minnesota started in Game 2, and then finished off the six-run comeback in Sunday’s rubber match with a ninth-inning, opposite-field homer to tie it.
His August has picked up right where July ended. Derek Shelton appears content to keep him in the 7- or 8-spot even after a July slash line of .323/.447/.462 - he led the Majors in OPB - but that only makes the bottom half of the order more dangerous for opposing pitchers.
Lewis was every bit as loud. He hit .333 (4 for 12) in Seattle and drove in four runs with two no-doubt homers.
His blast off Jose Ferrer on Friday tied the game. Since coming back from Triple-A St.
Paul, he’s looked better and better, but this week he started looking like the big-moment force Minnesota remembers from the 2023 Division Championship.
Larnach answered the trade rumors swirling around him with two homers of his own. Lee came through with three hits and a key game-tying run on Saturday.
Up and down the lineup, the Twins kept turning in tough plate appearances, forcing relief work, and producing late runs. That’s the kind of offensive profile winning teams lean on, and Minnesota flashed it in Seattle.
The games themselves turned on small margins. The Mariners got their two wins behind efficient starts, while the Twins had less command on the mound.
Saturday and Sunday even opened the same way: Connor Prielipp and Taj Bradley each gave up a leadoff hit to Cole Young and then walked Randy Arozarena on four pitches. Young and Arozarena scored in both games, and Minnesota spent long stretches chasing from behind before tying each one late and getting walked off in the ninth.
There were other costly moments, too. Royce Lewis seemed to hesitate before trying to throw out the winning run on Saturday. On Sunday, just before the comeback started, Kendry Rojas made the deficit worse with a hung slider to last year’s AL MVP runner-up.
Those kinds of lapses matter in tight road games, especially in a park like T-Mobile Park, which ranks 30th in MLB with a park factor of 91. Target Field, by contrast, is 3rd at 103. The Twins also evened the season series with Seattle, and if a Wild Card tie becomes relevant later, the tiebreak would come down to divisional record - something Minnesota can improve right away.
The standings still don’t look great, and they won’t get kinder if the Twins stumble through Kansas City and Milwaukee. The Brewers, as of now, are the best team in the National League, so the road trip doesn’t exactly lighten up from here.
But the bigger point from Seattle is this: Minnesota showed real life. No lead seems to rattle this group.
The right-handed bats are heating up. Larnach, in particular, looked like a player who has come through the trade-deadline noise intact.
The Twins played good baseball in Seattle, even if the two losses pushed them farther from the division lead.
Now they head to Kaufmann Stadium with a lineup that’s swinging it better and a bullpen that has improved behind it. Randy Dobnak starts Tuesday’s opener, followed by the newly-acquired Dean Kremer, wearing jersey No. 13, opposite no-hitter hopeful Noah Cameron on Wednesday night. Ace Michael Wacha will face Minnesota on ESPN on Thursday night at 6:40 pm CDT.
In Other News...
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Twins Prospects Could Soon Shape Minnesota's Playoff Push
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For a club trying to hang around long enough to matter in September, those prospects could become a real part of the equation before the year is over. Whether the Twins choose to lean on one or more of them will depend on how the roster holds up and how the playoff picture tightens, but the possibility of adding fresh talent has become one of the more interesting subplots in the final weeks. [Read more 🡒]