Wednesday in Minnesota sports was defined by the two hallmarks of summer, these days: baseball and wildfires. Plus, a look at what Lionel Messi moving to MLS means for Minnesota (short version: we probably won’t really see him.)

The news on the East Coast was all wildfires, all the time, as smoke from Canada enveloped most of the Amtrak corridor. The local angle here is that the Lynx game against the Liberty in New York was postponed until an undetermined future date, probably a day on which the sky is a bit less orange.

On the baseball front, the Twins are borderline unwatchable right now. Tuesday night, they got four hits; Wednesday night, they dropped that down to three, all singles. It was a miracle that one of them, Royce Lewis’s single in the ninth inning, happened to come after a walk and a hit by pitch, thereby scoring a run for the Twins purely by accident.

The particularly amazing thing is that this happened in a game where the Rays had also scored just one run. Pablo López held the Rays to a run on five hits and a walk, in seven innings, and so Lewis’s single actually tied the score in the ninth - and with just one out!

Of course, after another hit by pitch, Ryan Jeffers killed the rally by grounding into a double play. Even at that point, the Twins’ win probability was supposedly 36.6%; I suspect most fans would have put it right around 0.0%. And it took Jhoan Duran just two pitches in the bottom of the ninth to confirm that, giving up a walk-off home run to Randy Arozarena to doom the Twins to a fourth consecutive loss.

Amazingly, this is Minnesota’s first four-game losing streak of the year, and it drops them to 31-31, the first time they’ve been .500 or worse since they were 0-0 to start the season. The way they’re unable to hit, it’d be a shock if they stayed above .500. But hey, at least they’re still leading the AL Central by two and a half games, because AL Central gonna AL Central.

A night after hitting a grand slam to lead the Saints, Jair Camargo went one better, homering twice and driving in four runs as St. Paul beat up on Iowa again, 11-6. That’s nine wins in ten games for St. Paul, who are still somehow six games behind Norfolk at the top of the International League.

Matt Wallner and Eduoard Julien both had two hits and drove in runs for the Saints. Wallner’s OPS is at .992, while Julien’s is .946.

I maintain that you could swap this batting order with the Twins batting order and nobody would be able to tell the difference.

I am very disappointed to tell you that the Minnesota Aurora finally gave up a goal. Sure, they also hammered the Chicago Dutch Lions, 6-1, but I was very excited about the possibility they could go through the entire season without giving up a single goal.

Hannah Adler had a hat trick for the Aurora, which moves to 5-0-0, and has now (ho-hum) outscored its opponents 26-1 this year.

Finally, Lionel Messi announced to the world where he was headed - and to a fair amount of surprise, it was neither back to Barcelona, nor onwards to a (rumored) billion-dollar offer from Saudi Arabia. Instead, he’s working toward a landing with Inter Miami, which makes sense to me. After all, we’ve been told that MLS is a league of choice, and who wouldn’t choose to join the last-place team in the Eastern Conference, with a team that just fired their coach?

All kidding aside (and this being MLS, there’s plenty of things to kid about), from a Minnesota perspective, this doesn’t change our lives much, unless this pushes the league to change its scheduling somehow. Miami already only plays six games against the Western Conference, so even getting a MNUFC-Inter Miami matchup in the next few years was an iffy proposition. Getting a home matchup? When the league could so easily just make sure that, somehow, Miami travels to Los Angeles twice a year instead? I wouldn’t bet on Lionel Messi treading the Allianz Field turf at any point, never mind anytime soon.

That said, here’s hoping. After all, if Messi does someday come to St. Paul, season ticket holders might be able to pay for their tickets just by selling their seats for that game.

Thursday’s all about baseball. The Twins have a noon start in Tampa Bay, so by 2pm you should probably check in and see whether they’ve gotten a hit yet. Meanwhile, the Saints have an evening doubleheader with Iowa, and will look to keep their hot streak going.