MINNEAPOLIS - The Twins had the kind of start that should have carried them to a clean finish Sunday. Brooks Lee launched a first-inning grand slam, Kody Clemens added a solo shot in the third, and Minnesota jumped out to a 5-0 lead against the Phillies.
Then the offense disappeared.
Minnesota went hitless over the next four innings, Philadelphia erased the deficit with seven straight runs, and the Phillies finished off a three-game sweep with a 7-5 win at Target Field. It was another rough ending in a month the Twins have been trying to survive.
“That’s an extremely frustrating loss,” Twins manager Derek Shelton said.
The defeat dropped Minnesota to 4-10 in August, a stretch that has been marked by walk-offs, quiet bats and too many nights where the team has not looked like playoff-caliber baseball. The Twins are still only 1.5 games back of the final American League Wild Card spot, but there are five teams to climb over if they want their first postseason berth in three years.
“We got walked off twice in Seattle. We got walked off in Milwaukee.
And we did not play well in this series,” Shelton said. “We didn't play well at the Field of Dreams Game.
We went 1-for-14 yesterday with runners in scoring position. Today, we got the lead and we were not able to add on and we did not hold.
So yeah, it's very frustrating.”
For a while, Sunday looked like the kind of game that could help reset everything. Lee came up one pitch after missing a grand slam by inches down the right field line and turned around to send one a few feet farther left for the slam that made it 4-0.
It was his 18th homer of the season, a new career high, and his second grand slam in the majors. The first came almost exactly a year earlier, on August 17, 2025, off his old fishing buddy, Chris Paddack.
Clemens pushed the lead to 5-0 with his moonshot in the third, and the Twins still had control early. But after Trevor Larnach’s two-out single in the fourth, the lineup went dead. The next 12 batters were retired, five of them via strikeout, as Philadelphia kept cycling through bullpen arms and Minnesota never found a counterpunch.
The Twins also burned themselves on the bases in a key spot. Royce Lewis drew a two-out walk in the eighth, ending a long stretch without a baserunner, and Lee followed with a grounder up the middle.
Bryson Stott made a diving stop, and Lewis headed for second standing up after realizing he would be safe. But he drifted a little too far off the bag, and Stott’s throw to Edmundo Sosa led to the tag for the third out.
Minnesota got one last chance in the ninth against Jhoan Duran, its former closer. The Twins put two runners on with one out, but Duran struck out Ryan Jeffers and Byron Buxton to shut the door and close out the sweep.
Josh Bell said the group still believes a turnaround is there if it can find the right spark.
“I think everybody in this room has played this game long enough to know that all it takes is a spark,” Bell said. “We’re just kind of waiting for that right now.
I don’t think the vibes in here have changed at all. I think we believe in ourselves.
We’ve seen it all season long. One big win and we can take that and run with it so we’re just waiting for it.”
Bell, a veteran of 11 Major League seasons, said the answer is simple: get back to work and try to get hot.
“I think it’s just the mentality that we’ve got to get back after it tomorrow,” Bell said. “We’ve still got a ton of season left. A tough stretch the last couple of weeks but a lot more baseball to play, and we’ve just got to get going, got to get hot, start playing our brand of ball.”
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