It sure has been a weekend on the Minnesota sports scene. The Twins turned sour as the weekend wore on, and MNUFC failed to win at home again, but the Lynx finally found the win column in the standings, and the lower-division soccer teams in the area had a successful weekend too. Let’s round up the whole weekend, shall we?

Four runs.

That’s how many runs the Twins managed in their three games over the weekend, scoring one on Friday, two on Saturday, and one on Sunday.

Minnesota went a combined 3-for-19 with runners in scoring position, including 0-7 on Sunday; in both Friday and Sunday’s game, they only managed to score on a solitary, bases-empty home run.

Using the old six innings / three earned runs metric, the Twins got three quality starts, against the American League’s most anemic offense that doesn’t wear green and gold and play in front of 300 people at the Oakland Coliseum… and they STILL managed to lose twice to the Cleveland Guardians.

You can blame this on missing Byron Buxton and Carlos Correa all weekend, or that Joey Gallo has now hit the disabled list, but it’s not like any of them are burning things up. Since May 1, Correa actually has the highest OPS of the three, at .708 (which is 14 points below league average). Buxton’s is .645; Gallo’s at .625.

All three, in May, were on a 180+ strikeout pace for a full season; Gallo struck out an astonishing 40 times in 100 plate appearances.

So the guys that are supposed to hit aren’t hitting. And that leaves the Twins Backup Plans, and while you have to give them credit for keeping the Twins from going completely in the tank, it’s not a long-term solution, is it?

Let’s put it this way - in the bottom of the ninth on Sunday, the Guardians brought in their closer to face the Twins’ 3-4-5 hitters. The meat of the lineup! The most dangerous part of the batting order! Surely, the Twins could get the run they needed?

Those 3-4-5 hitters were Donovan Solano, Max Kepler, and Kyle Farmer.

The St. Paul Saints 3-4-5 hitters on Sunday were Trevor Larnach, Matt Wallner, and Edouard Julien.

Hand on heart… is there any difference?

Speaking of St. Paul, Minnesota United was back at Allianz Field. Normally, being in St. Paul is a good thing for the Loons, but this year the eastern Twin City has been a bit of a nightmare factory.

Saturday, it was more on the nightmare side of the ledger again, as the Loons drew 1-1 with the extremely struggling Toronto FC, a team where the star players have actively been trying to get the coach fired.

It’s hard to overstate how much of a home-field-advantage league MLS can be. There was a season not too long ago where zero teams had winning records on the road, or losing records at home. The top team in the standings this year, Cincinnati, has nine wins out of nine games at home.

And then there is Minnesota, which has one win, one loss, and five draws in St. Paul this year.

The Loons have actually won four games on the road this year, which in other seasons would represent eight months’ worth of away wins; they’re one of only two MLS teams to win four times on the road so far. But they’ve been letting down the home crowd, again and again. Between MLS games, and their sparsely-attended home win against Philadephia in the U.S. Open Cup, they’ve only played “Wonderwall” twice all season.

The big story in this one was that Emanuel Reynoso finally returned to the field for MNUFC, coming on in the second half as a substitute. It was pretty clear from the reaction that, if the crowd held his unexcused absence against him earlier this year, its anger had evaporated; by the second half on Friday, they were just desperate for anybody to give the team a spark.

Reynoso did do that; whether he’s in shape or not, he was immediately the Loons’ best player on the field. He nearly scored with one of his first touches, he was instrumental in the team’s danger from corner kicks and set pieces, and while he didn’t score the goal - that was Kervin Arriaga, driving a three-wood through some trees that deflected past the keeper with two minutes to go - it was the first time the Loons’ attack looked whole, all season.

Next Saturday, in Montréal, is the halfway point of Minnesota’s schedule, and they get a two-week break following that game. You can sense that they’re just trying to get to that break, and then regroup and start the second half.

The Lynx finally got a win, beating Washington 80-78 on Saturday, and I have studied and studied and studied the box score to try to figure out how they did it, and I’ve got nothing. They turned the ball over 16 times again - they’re leading the WNBA in turnovers, though on a per-game basis they’re only third-worst - but they did make more three-pointers than Washington did, and they held the Mystics to 39.4% shooting overall.

Looking the stats overall, too, nothing jumps out. They’re not a great defensive team, second-to-last in defensive rating, but they’re middle-of-the-pack in everything else. If they were 4-3 through seven games, you wouldn’t really say they were particularly lucky, but instead they’re 1-6.

Perhaps it’s just evidence that the Lynx have truly cracked what my Sportive co-host has termed the CBI (Clark-Bueckers Index). They’re tanking, but they’re doing it in the absolute best, non-tanking way of all time.

On the USL pre-professional soccer scene, it was a good weekend for the Twin Cities. Minneapolis City beat the Milwaukee Bavarians 1-0 on Friday night, a game that I was at and will be writing something about later this week, and the Minnesota Aurora kept their spotless record going on Sunday.

Aurora’s record thus far: four games, four wins, 20 goals for, 0 goals against.

They’re a third of the way through their season schedule. At what point do we start treating this like a no-hitter in baseball, and stop talking about their chances to go through the season undefeated, untied, and unscored upon? Two more games? Three?

Finally, the St. Paul Saints did some more damage in Buffalo over the weekend, winning two out of three to take the overall series with the Bisons, 5-1.

(Side note: I can’t figure out why it’s “Bisons.” Surely the correct plural is “Bison”?)

Any Saints update could not be complete without an update on Matt Wallner, who has emerged as the club with which Twins fans use to pummel Max Kepler.

Wallner hit three doubles over the weekend, while Kepler went 1-for-9 at Target Field. This has been your Get Angry About Max Kepler Update.

In other “former Twins hitters” news, Edouard Julien and Jose Miranda both got four hits over the weekend, though the latter’s OPS is still a Gallo-esque .534 in St. Paul. Julien also homered, as did Trevor Larnach, though Larnach also fanned six times.

On the pitching side, Simeon Woods Richardson started on Saturday but couldn’t find the strike zone, walking five (but allowing just two hits and two runs) in four and a third. Kenta Maeda made the start on Sunday, and gave up two runs on five hits in three innings.

Given the way the rotation is going, Kenta Maeda may be in St. Paul for as long as he can possibly be there.

Tonight… well, tonight everybody’s got an evening off. What am I going to do tonight? Talk to my family?

The Saints need to rest up, as they’ve got a seven-game series at home with Iowa this week (including a doubleheader Thursday), while the Twins travel to Tampa Bay and Toronto to get clobbered by the AL East. The Lynx have to go to New York on Wednesday - that could be rough - but host Indiana on Friday.

Could be a long week! Could be one of those weeks.