Greetings, salutations, hello again. It has been a minute since our last update; I got sick and missed a day or two, then I was busy one day writing a whole bunch of Women’s World Cup stuff for the Star Tribune (here, and here, and a podcast here). But now all that’s over, and so we might as well sum up the last few days, rather than just last night, because a lot has happened with the Loons and the Twins and the Lynx and the Saints.

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I fear that Joe Ryan may be, as they say, cooked.

Ryan hasn’t had a good start in a month, and Wednesday’s was his worst one yet. He gave up four homers in the first three innings, the Twins were down 7-0 before there were two outs in the third, and from there it was smooth sailing for St. Louis, which beat the Twins 7-3.

Minnesota managed just four hits, AND bounced into three double plays, which is pretty hard to do. If it hadn’t been for a three-run homer from Matt Wallner, the game would have stayed 7-0. Wallner now has five homers in seven games, but hasn’t had another hit other than the homers in a week and a half, and has struck out 13 times.

Why do the Twins even need Joey Gallo? They have Young Gallo right here.

Like so many young pitchers, Ryan was affected by the lost Covid season, but there was hope that he wouldn’t run out of gas this year. He threw 147 innings last year, and posted a 2.20 ERA in September, so it wasn’t like he was dragging as the year progressed.

This year, though… on June 22, Ryan threw a three-hit shutout against Boston. At that point, he had a 2.98 ERA and a 0.91 WHIP - absolutely sterling numbers. He’d allowed eight homers, in 15 starts.

Since then, he’s made seven starts. He’s allowed 17 homers in those seven starts, with an 8.63 ERA and a 1.79 WHIP. He has been throwing batting practice for over a month.

Something’s wrong there, and it does feel like maybe he needs a break. It might be time for the Twins to invent a stress injury for him, just so he can take a couple of starts off and try to get right; all they need to do is copy any of their updates about Brock Stewart, and they’ll be fine. They can bring up Dallas Keuchel in the interim, and see if Keuchel can still get a few guys out in the major leagues.

The Twins are leading the AL Central by two games. They are behind every AL East team in the standings, and every AL West team except for the hapless Oakland A’s. It feels like they are winning a competition to fall down a flight of stairs.

Down in Triple-A, St. Paul held Columbus to just two hits, beating the Clippers 5-3. It was a walk-fest - the teams combined for just nine hits, but fifteen walks - and the Saints managed to boot the ball around a bit too, as none of the three Columbus runs were earned.

Simeon Woods Richardson started for the Saints, and still can’t find the strike zone; he gave up just one hit in four innings, but walked six. Woods Richardson has walked 44 and struck out 64 this year, in 75 innings, which is not the kind of numbers you want to see for a potential major-league pitching prospect.

Gilberto Celestino had two hits for St. Paul, and drove in two runs - one with a single, and appropriately, one with a walk.

TODAY’S SLATE

TWINS at St. Louis, 6:45pm
SAINTS at Columbus, 11:05am

ON DECK

LOONS at Columbus, Friday
LYNX vs New York, Friday

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Well, now it has to work.

Tuesday’s trade deadline came and went with the Twins having made one move, total - the one they made last week, when they swapped Jorge López for Dylan Floro, a case of Minnesota and Miami both trying to improve guys who’ve struggled all season. But otherwise, the Twins decided to add nothing - not another bullpen arm, not a player who can hit left-handed pitching, nothing.

It fits in with the rest of the year: the plan is to hope that things improve.

And it’s worth remembering why this is the plan: because the Twins already traded so many assets that they feel like they can’t get rid of more.

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What the heck is going on with the - well, this can go one of two ways.

We could, I guess, start with the Twins, and the shock would have an absurdly negative connotation. But instead let’s start with the Lynx, who are no less shocking, but in a good way.

A few weeks ago, we pointed to the Lynx’s current six-game stretch - Vegas, Washington, at New York, two at Connecticut, home against New York - as a potential back-breaking stretch. Coming into it, Minnesota was 1-8 on the year against teams with winning records, and all four teams had winning records. And when the Lynx lost to Vegas to start things off, giving up 98 points in the process, it seemed like the past was going to predict the future.

Minnesota did pull off a win in the second game, outgunning Washington 97-92 behind a double-double from Napheesa Collier and 21 points from Diamond Miller, but Collier - the team’s best player and sole All-Star - turned her ankle late in the fourth quarter. And so Lynx fans braced for the weekend, expecting disaster.

What the heck is going on with the Lynx? They went out east and beat both New York and Connecticut, without Collier, in two of the most surprising results of the WNBA season.

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Well, they’re still the Twins.

Minnesota struck out 18 times, the bullpen spectacularly blew a four-run lead after a Pablo López gem of a start, and the Twins lost for the first time in five games, 9-7 to the Mariners.

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Monday’s 4-3 Twins win against Seattle was a very good game, from both an excitement and anger perspective; the lead changed twice in the ninth inning and again in the tenth inning, so you can’t beat it for drama, and both Twins fans and Mariners fans both had two or three chances to be indescribably angry along the way.

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If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times, whether it was here or elsewhere: Minnesota United is built for the Leagues Cup.

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I feel bad for Byron Buxton. I don’t think that I necessarily speak for all of Twins fandom when I say that I just kind of feel bad for the guy, but neither do I think I’m alone in this. And while there are a lot of different emotions, as a fan, that are pretty normal when you’re watching a player on your team struggle - empathy, anger, disappointment, “disappointment” that is actually anger, et cetera - I think there are very few Twins fans that aren’t, ultimately, rooting for the guy. Everybody would rather him have an OPS of 1.200 and be hitting 40 home runs this year.

Anyway, the Twins lost 5-0 to the Mariners on Thursday, ending a two-game winning streak that also coincided with Buxton being out of the lineup. Batting fifth, the Twins DH was 0-for-4 with two strikeouts. He’s now 0-for-21 since the All-Star break, with 12 strikeouts. His batting average has dropped to .193. His OPS in July - his OPS! - is .363.

If this isn’t rock bottom, then he can definitely see rock bottom from here.

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Starting note: I wrote another World Cup article for the Star Tribune, detailing why the USA probably shouldn’t be the favorite this time - even though, if you go by history, they always are.

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Just a note to start: I’m writing a few articles about the World Cup for the Star Tribune. Here’s the first one about the USA’s competition for the title, including a few traditional men’s powerhouses that were late getting going with women’s soccer.

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