Okay, who brought the old Twins back? Right as we thought the Twins were on the upswing, they’ve now scored one run in their past 16 innings against the Tigers, to whom they lost on Friday, 7-1.

They’re getting killed by Javy Báez, who got the biggest hit of the game again on Friday, this time a three-run homer. They’re also getting killed by whoever Matt Vierling is; he hit two home runs and is 6-for-7 in the series.

Byron Buxton is 0-for-8 with four strikeouts since returning from the IL. Since May 2nd, Buxton is batting .161 and slugging .290, and has struck out in almost one of every three trips to the plate. Even Max Kepler has a better slugging percentage (.310) over that span, and most Twins fans would happily see Kepler sent to someplace they don’t have baseball.

The Twins are back to .500, 35-35, and are just two games up on Cleveland. Maybe more damning, they are just 12-10 against the horrible AL Central.

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There’s no question in sports quite like the one that baseball fans ask, in reference to the game this afternoon or this evening or that they’ve just passed by on the TV: “Who’s pitching?”

For Twins fans, it’s often been a bit of a fraught question, since so often over the past decade, the follow-up question has been, “Who’s that?”

For once, though, the Twins have put together a rotation that almost always means there’s a good answer to the question. Almost always, you look at the starting pitcher and think, “Yeah, the Twins could win today.”

There’s one catch, though, regarding that question, especially in today’s game. Obviously, the starting pitcher remains important, but - especially for the Twins - an equally important question might be, “Who’s available out of the bullpen?”

Wednesday, the Twins used their Good Bullpen. Brock Stewart pitched the seventh, Jhoan Duran the high-leverage eighth, Griffin Jax the ninth. The Brewers didn’t get a sniff - they struck out five times and only managed to hit two ground balls that made it past the pitcher.

Thursday, though, that meant that all the Twins had available was their Bad Bullpen. Which is why it was even more curious that Rocco Baldelli decided to go there early.

Sonny Gray wasn’t particularly sharp on the mound, especially in the fourth inning, when he threw 35 pitches and allowed a single and three walks. But he pitched out of it, mostly; one run scored on a double-play grounder, which turned a 4-1 lead into a 4-2 lead.

With just 79 pitches under his belt, Gray expected to at least pitch the fifth, which prompted an argument with Baldelli in the dugout when the latter informed the former that his evening was done. I don’t expect that Gray was reminding Baldelli that his available bullpen was about to light some fires, but fans had to know that it was coming.

And so it proved. Jovani Moran immediately gave up three runs in the fifth, including a two-run triple by Javy Báez. This did have the effect of freeing Emilio Pagán, who is a good pitcher as long as he doesn’t have a lead to blow, and who thus contributed two solid innings. But this led right into the latest episode of “Jorge López Is Working Through Some Stuff,” one that included three Tigers doubles in the ninth inning, ended only by López somehow catching a foul pop-up to end the inning, and then sprinting to the dugout before he could be booed off the field again.

Duran, Jax, and Stewart are the Good Bullpen; Moran, Pagán, and López are the Bad Bullpen. (José De León and Josh Winder are the Anonymous Bullpen.)

Who’s pitching? Well, Friday is a Good Bullpen day, so the Twins have got a shot.

Down in Triple-A, the St. Paul Saints kept homering - but didn’t manage to keep winning. Catcher Chris Williams homered for the third consecutive game, bringing his three-day homer total to six, but the Saints lost 6-3 to Louisville.

Matt Wallner has cooled down a bit; he’s just 4-for-21 over his last five games, with eight strikeouts, and he hasn’t hit a homer in a couple of weeks. That said, he’s still hitting .295 / .409 / .455 in June, so “cooling down” is a relative term here. Jose Miranda, conversely, seems to be righting his ship a little bit. After not hitting at all, anywhere, in May, Miranda is batting .333 / .417 / .429 in June, with only six strikeouts in 11 games.

Tonight’s Schedule

TWINS vs. Detroit, 7:10. Joe Ryan is pitching.
SAINTS at Louisville, 6:15. Kenta Maeda is expected to make a rehab start and go five innings.
LYNX at Los Angeles, 9:00. Minnesota’s now tied for the worst record in the WNBA, with Seattle.

According to the underlying numbers, Minnesota United’s mediocre record isn’t because they’re a mediocre team - instead, they’re underperforming their numbers to a historic degree. Now that Emanuel Reynoso is back, it’s up to him to fix it. My column for Sota Soccer is here.

(Editorial note, after the jump here: I haven’t been writing much for Sota Soccer this year, but the plan is for me to contribute a biweekly Loons column.)

It was Wildfire Wednesday in Minnesota, as the smoke came rushing down from Canada, and affected the entire sports slate in the state.

The most obvious effects were felt by Minneapolis City SC, which postponed its game, and the Minnesota Aurora, which hurriedly shifted its game indoors, to the St. Croix Valley Recreation Center.

A special word for the Aurora and to the crew from Fox 9+. Not only did they manage to get their game played - albeit with no fans in attendance - but the match was still broadcast on TV, which gave disappointed fans the ability to watch the game, at least.

The Aurora rewarded those that tuned in, by hammering Green Bay 5-0, in a game in which Hannah Adler scored after 33 seconds. Cat Rapp scored five minutes later, then again in the 26th minute, and the rout was on. Minnesota’s now 7-0-0, has scored 34 goals, and allowed two.

Cheering for the Aurora is fun because, unlike most Minnesota sports teams, they pretty much always leave you happy at the end of the match.

For the Twins, the wildfire effects were less totally debilitating - they got their game in, before the air quality went from “it’s bad” to “nobody should go outside” - but they still did affect the game. The Twins’ fourth run scored when two Brewers failed to track a Joey Gallo pop fly into right field. Frankly, it looked a bit like a Metrodome game - every time a fly ball went up, there was a chance of losing it in the haze.

Carlos Correa was the hero again, lining a two-out triple hard off the right-field wall that scored two runs, in what was a bit of a carnival inning for Milwaukee right fielder Brian Anderson. First, he went back on Correa’s liner, but failed to corral it when it bounced hard off the wall in right, below the limestone facade but above the padding. The ball rolled halfway back to second base, allowing Donovan Solano - not a speedster - to score standing up from first base, and Correa to motor all the way to third.

The next batter was Trevor Larnach, who ripped a shot at Anderson - who went back and back, got concerned about the ball hitting the overhang, took his eye off the ball to look at the wall, and turned back in time for the ball to almost hit him in the head. RBI Double.

Gallo was next, and that was the pop fly that Anderson didn’t track; he hardly started in, and the ball ended up dropping 225 feet from the plate, behind the scrambling second baseman. RBI… single?

(Gallo got tagged out at second base because he failed to slide, so it was just some well-played baseball by everyone, on that play.)

Anyway, in another universe, the Twins get just one run from the inning; in the event, they got four.

Bailey Ober gave up back-to-back homers in the second inning, but was otherwise solid, striking out seven and coming back to labor his way through six innings. And the Twins bullpen, subject of so much opprobrium, was lights-out; Brock Stewart struck out the side, Jhoan Duran got two weak grounders back to the mound and a strikeout, and Griffin Jax shut the door.

As long as those three guys are the guys out of the bullpen, the Twins’ relief core looks just fine. Jax in particular has been transformed over the past month or so.

Somehow, the same team that scored three runs in three games against Tampa Bay has come back and won four out of five, and should have won the fifth game too. Suddenly everything seems fine with the Twins? Now they get to play the Tigers four times?

Down in Triple-A, in Louisville, Chris Williams was at it again for the Saints. A day after homering three times to lead his team to double digits, he launched two more homers, and St. Paul beat up on the Bats again, 11-3.

In two days, Williams has five homers and eleven runs batted in, which is a pretty good month in about 19 hours or so.

Jair Camargo also homered, as did Elliot Soto and Anthony Prato, and St. Paul has itself another three-game winning streak. St. Paul’s still six games behind Norfolk at the top of the International League, somehow, with just ten games to go until the end of the first half, so unless something miraculous happens, this hot streak won’t put the Saints in the playoffs.

They’ll get another crack at the Bats tonight, and the Twins might host the Tigers as scheduled (I really don’t know what MLB’s air quality-related policies are).

In Minnesota, where we’re trapped inside for five months in the winter, it sure is a slap in the face that the environment has found a way to trap us in our homes in the summer, too.

We need to rank the Twins’ hitting heroes from the ninth inning of their 7-5 win over Milwaukee on Tuesday.

Yes, of course, Carlos Correa will take the headlines, as well he should - partially because Twins fans are just hoping that the Correa they’ve seen over the past few games is the Correa they’ll get for the rest of the season. For the second time in three games, Correa won a game with his bat, blasting a walk-off homer off of unhittable Brewers closer Devin Williams to give the Twins the series opener against Milwaukee.

I estimate the exit velocity to have been approximately 300 mph; it was one of those homers that fans barely had times to get sound out of their lungs, before it was banging off the facade of the second deck in left field.

But there were so many more heroes! In a Twins batting order! We need to properly appreciate the rest.

First, let’s set up the context here. For the last few innings before the ninth, the Twins broadcasters on both TV and radio had been reminding viewers and listeners that if the game got to the ninth inning with the Twins trailing, the game was pretty much over, because Milwaukee had Williams.

He came into the game with an 0.42 ERA, having allowed one run all season - a meaningless homer in a 7-3 win against San Francisco. Hitters had a better chance of standing still and hoping to walk to first than they did of getting a hit; he’d allowed ten walks in 21.2 innings, but batters were hitting .110 against him.

I’m not sure it worried the Brewers dugout that the Twins had Michael A. Taylor, Edouard Julien, and Donovan Solano due to hit.

For additional context, the Twins had just managed to load the bases in the bottom of the eighth inning, with a single and a walk and a hit-by-pitch that was called after replay, but Joey Gallo took two monstrous whiffs and then watched the next four pitches, including the last one, which was right down the middle.

So not only did Milwaukee have their impossible-to-hit closer on the mound, but Gallo had just demonstrated the entire panoply of Twins hitting failings - failure in the clutch, failure with the bases loaded, striking out, swinging and missing, et cetera.

Which is why hero #1 on my list is Taylor, who stepped up and cracked the second pitch he saw over the fence in straightaway center.

It’s June 14th and somehow Taylor has ten home runs already; only Gallo has more, for Minnesota. Plus Taylor has played really good defense in center, and has stolen eleven bases without getting caught. Going by bWAR, he’s just behind Willi Castro as the most valuable player the Twins have had this season.

Which brings us to hero #2, which is Castro. After Julien worked a walk, the Twins pinch-ran Castro, down 5-4, in the hopes he could do exactly what he ended up doing - steal second, then score on a hit.

It was a little wilder than that, though - not only was the stolen base perfectly dramatic, including Castro almost over-sliding second and having to reach back to avoid the tag, but then when Solano - hero #3 - cracked a single to short center, Castro wheeled around third, ignored the stop sign he got from Tommy Watkins, and charged home to tie the game.

The throw was up the first-base line; an on-target throw would have gotten him. And imagine what this post would be like if Castro had run through a stop sign and made an out at the plate in that situation.

A word for Solano, who also drove in a run with a single in the third inning. “Donnie Barrels” struck out twice and went 2-for-5, but he came up with runners in scoring position three times in the game, and knocked in two runs. Solano has a 1.050 OPS with runners in scoring position this year.

So, save a thought for Taylor and Castro and Solano, who got Correa to the plate - but it’s Correa’s walk-off homer, somehow the first one of his career in the regular season, that we’ll remember.

When a team wins 18-7 and sets a franchise record for hits in a game, as the St. Paul Saints did in their first game of six in Louisville, there are bound to be a lot of guys whose lines in the box score jump out.

That said, the top one is definitely first baseman Chris Williams, who smashed three homers and drove in seven runs. Williams is one of those Triple-A guys who come without much pedigree; he’s 26, was an 8th-round pick in 2018, and doesn’t seem to appear much on top Minnesota prospect lists. He did post a .915 OPS in Double-A last year, in 75 games, but hit just .192 in St. Paul in 42 games there.

Hitting three homers in a game is a good way to get noticed, though, and he does have a .940 OPS this season.

Gilberto Celestino also homered and had three hits, in his second game with the Saints since returning from the disabled list. (Matt Wallner only had two hits, the bum.)

But hey, the Twins can hit again, so who even cares which prospects are stuck at St. Paul? [/sound of every Twins blogger crying out in pain]

Wednesday’s a day for afternoon baseball, as the Twins play at 12:10pm and the Saints at 11:05am. Tonight, there’s plenty of local soccer on tap, as the Minnesota Aurora take on the hated Green Bay Glory, and Minneapolis City SC hosts less-hated FC Manitoba.

I don’t know how old the readers of this blog might be, but it occurs to me that some of them might be not only younger than me, but perhaps even under 30 years old. So as we round up the Minnesota sports scene, I’m going to start by assigning those potential young whippersnappers a bit of homework: this is the Eric Fox Game.

The quick summary: riding high as World Series champions, the Twins took a three-game AL West lead into a home series with Oakland in late July of 1992. Unfortunately, Minnesota got swept, including losing the third game 5-4 when a little-used outfielder named Eric Fox hit a three-run, ninth-inning homer.

The Twins never recovered, going comprehensively in the tank, finishing half a dozen games out of first… and it was a straight line from there to near-contraction five years later.

Why are we talking about Eric Fox, of all people? I mention him because ever since then, it’s been tempting to look at small moments throughout any season and wonder, “Hey, maybe this is his / their Eric Fox Game, the thing that changes everything.”

Saturday’s Twins game was like that for Carlos Correa. The Twins shortstop has been worse than a league-average hitter, the worst hitter on the team in terms of Win Probability Added, and so his eighth-inning grand slam felt like it very well could be an inflection point - both for him, the struggling hitter, and for the Twins, the team that seemingly couldn’t hit with the bases loaded.

It was a perfect setup, after that home run - win Friday, win Saturday, five-run lead Sunday - and then Correa swept across second base, about to turn the double play that would let the Twins escape the fifth inning with a 6-1 lead, and darted his throw into the dirt at first base. A run scored, then Matt Chapman hit a homer to make it 6-4.

All of which would have been fine, except it set the stage for another one of Rocco Badelli’s fits of belief in Emilio Pagán. Pagán, who is a fine pitcher as long as there’s no possibility of blowing a lead, was given the eighth inning with the Twins still leading by two, and did what he does - single, single, home run, Twins down 7-6 before he’s even managed to get an out.

Putting Pagán into a close game is like opening a creaky, dark door in a horror movie - everybody watching knows it’s a bad idea, but they’re powerless to stop it.

It put a damper on what was otherwise a fine weekend for the Twins in Toronto. They won an extra-inning game, for one, and then they scored more than two runs in back-to-back games, which probably qualifies for fans to meet their return flight at the airport, at this point of the season.

Anyway, we can only hope that Correa is about to turn it on. He hit two doubles on Sunday. He got five hits and two walks in 14 trips to the plate in Toronto. This qualifies, well, as “more like it.”

In the next province over, Minnesota United got hammered in Montréal, losing 4-0.

It’s another weird one! I know that xG isn’t completely predictive on a one-game basis, much as we’d all like it to be (just think of the number of coaches who sometimes cite expected goals as a justification that it was the forces of luck and fate that did their team in), but when the Loons keep on winning the xG battle and dropping points, you have to think something’s up.

If you go by the numbers at American Soccer Analysis, this was the sixth time in the last seven games that the Loons have had better xG numbers, and yet in those six games, the Loons have earned five points.

I suppose that the best explanation for this is finishing. Mender García officially has Hunou Syndrome, where you start to wonder if maybe he’d be better off trying to miss, because then he’d screw up and actually score. The Loons officially sold Luis Amarilla to Mazatlán FC this week, which is actually pretty good business, whatever the transfer fee - but also maybe makes you wonder about the Mazatlán scouting department.

Teemu Pukki can’t get here fast enough.

On the flip side, we still have to wonder about Dayne St. Clair. We’re halfway through the season, and I can’t find any numbers that don’t rate him as the worst regular keeper in MLS (and believe me, I’ve tried). Maybe there are just random outliers in the data sets that will work themselves out, but I think it’s fair to say that St. Clair’s not exactly winning them matches right now.

The Lynx split a pair of weekend games, with the win coming Sunday against Los Angeles. Napheesa Collier led Minnesota with 24 points, but it was Bridget Carleton who was the heroine, drilling two threes in the final 1:10 to turn a two-point deficit into a four-point lead.

Minnesota’s 2-7 now. If they’re tanking, they’re still doing it right - Friday’s loss was to Indiana, just the Fever’s second win of the year. On the flip side, they’re not exactly out of the playoff race already - Atlanta, the current 8th seed, is 2-5.

It does feel like there are three good teams in the WNBA (Las Vegas, Connecticut, New York), three or four middling teams, and then a group of maybe five teams who could all end up on the bottom of the standings.

The Saints lost twice over the weekend, including a painful loss Friday when they led 5-2 in the ninth and ended up losing 7-5. But Joey Gallo did hit two homers over the weekend (and struck out twice, because he’s Joey Gallo), and Kenta Maeda was sharp on Saturday, striking out five in four innings and allowing zero runs.

Also, Gilberto Celestino made his Triple-A debut for the season on Sunday, walking three times and going 0-2 to give him the strange slash line of .000 / .600 / .000.

In USL action, one team went forwards and one went backwards. Minnesota Aurora FC won again, and remains undefeated and untied at the halfway mark of the season.

It’s still unreal that the Aurora, in one and a half seasons, has tied once (opening day 2022) and lost once (championship game 2022) and has otherwise won every game they’ve ever played.

On the other end of the spectrum, Minneapolis City lost 5-1 at home to Rochester FC. The Crows are in sixth place in the seven-team Deep North division of USL League Two, and have to be feeling realistic about their chances this year.

Also in the lower divisions, Minnesota United 2 got waxed 4-1 at home by Houston Dynamo 2.

Monday’s another one of those “no sports in Minnesota” days. I suppose this is due to fact that the Saints have only one Monday game the entire year, it’s not a big day for soccer, and every one of the Twins’ off days this year is on a Monday or a Thursday.

Still, a good night for calm, and to review everything about your life, to see where the Eric Foxes might lurk.

School’s out for the summer, at least in my neck of the woods, and so today’s Minnesota sports update feels rather wistful for summers gone by. Ah, to be a kid again… back when the Twins could hit.

What can you say about the Minnesota Twins hitting that hasn’t already been said about the Oakland Athletics hitting, or the Cleveland Guardians hitting, or about any of the other disasters of the modern age?

It happened again on Thursday, as the Twins lost 4-2 to Tampa Bay, their fifth consecutive loss. During that losing streak, the Twins scored six runs, and perhaps more tellingly, struck out 52 times versus putting on a total of 39 baserunners.

It’s hard to watch! Carlos Correa hit a home run in the top of the fourth inning on Thursday, but Tampa Bay scored three times in the bottom of the inning, and at that point, you might as well have turned the game off, because Minnesota’s chances of scoring three more runs to win the game seemed vanishingly small.

In the first inning, Jorge Polanco hit a line drive that should have been a hit, but instead hit the second-base umpire and popped into the air, leading to a fielder’s choice at second base - and Polanco hurt himself on the play, too. A lot of people are casting this as sort of a “how typical that this happens to the Twins” kind of bad-luck thing, but I don’t think that’s the truth.

Now that Polanco’s out again, the Twins have exactly one hitter in their lineup, Alex Kirilloff, who has an above-league-average OPS. This isn’t about bad luck. Bad things happen to bad teams because they are bad.

Anyway, the Twins are 31-32 now, under .500 for the first time this season, and now they have to go to Toronto, which has won three straight. It’s not looking good!

Over in St. Paul, the Saints’ winning streak finally came to a thudding halt, but naturally they immediately made up for it, losing the first half of a doubleheader 13-3, but coming back in the second half for a split with a 7-6 win.

Old friend Randy Dobnak took the pounding in the first game, pitching three innings and allowing nine runs (eight earned) on eleven hits and two walks, while striking out no one. Remember when Randy Dobnak was the Twins’ third starter, maybe even their second starter? Anyway.

Simeon Woods Richardson wasn’t much better in the finale, giving up six runs, seven hits, and four walks in three and a third innings, and the Saints trailed 6-2, but they rallied - like many baseball teams do, except for certain other ones - thanks to a homer by catcher Tony Wolters and a Jose Miranda RBI double, eventually sending the game to an 8th inning (seven-inning doubleheaders, remember those?) and winning in the bottom of the 8th.

Miranda was 3-for-7 with a walk on the day, helping to pull his Triple-A OPS out of the 500s. Jair Camargo homered in the first game, his third consecutive game with a home run, and Wolters had three hits and drove in two runs in the nightcap, as the catchers drove the offense.

As mentioned, the Twins are in Toronto for the weekend, and the Saints continue to host Iowa.

Minnesota United FC is also headed to Canada, taking on Montréal on Saturday night, while the Minnesota Lynx are home for a pair - Friday against Indiana, and Sunday against Los Angeles.

In the USL pre-professional ranks, the Minnesota Aurora hit the halfway point of their schedule, on the road against Chicago City SC on Sunday, while Minneapolis City SC hosts Rochester FC on Saturday evening. And for those looking for a little National Sports Center nostalgia, Minnesota United 2 hosts Houston Dynamo 2 on Sunday evening, in MLS NEXT Pro action.

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.

After the state took a breather on Monday, Minnesota’s pro baseball teams were back in action Tuesday, with all of the garment-rending that might produce. Let’s take a look, shall we?

So often, my routine for checking the Twins score goes something like this.

1. [Open MLB app on phone]
2. [See 0 next to Twins logo]
3. “Ah, crap…”
4. [Tap on “BOX” link with great trepidation to see if the Twins have been no-hit]

When fans just assume on a daily basis that you are being, or have been, no-hit, you know things aren’t going well.

Anyway, the Twins didn’t get no-hit on Tuesday night - they got four hits, thank you very much, as they lost 7-0 to the Tampa Bay Rays. Michael A. Taylor hit a double and also didn’t strike out, making him by far the Twins’ best hitter. The rest of the lineup managed to fan a combined twelve times, including three more Ks for Carlos Correa, who nevertheless managed to raise his puny batting average by also hitting a double.

Louie Varland got slapped around all night, giving up seven runs on four walks and six hits (including two homers), bringing him rather back down to earth after his gem against Houston last week. It pushes Varland’s season numbers into the “okay maybe we’ll see Kenta Maeda again after all” territory - ERA of 4.40, FIP now north of 6.60.

Max Kepler went 0-for-2 with a strikeout, and is now hitting .189. Rocco Baldelli pinch-hit for him in the seventh, even though the Twins were already losing 5-0. It must be hard for Kepler, knowing that most of the fan base would happily see him defenestrated from the Skydome Hotel, later this week.

In other news, Byron Buxton finally went on the disabled list, after he left the game last Thursday due to a 97-mph fastball in the ribs. I don’t want to tell the Twins training staff how to do their jobs, but it seems like maybe they should have some ice ready, in situations like these. Trevor Larnach was recalled to take his spot.

For the entire season, the Twins have exactly one extra-base hit (a double) with the bases loaded, in 60 tries (they’re batting .140 and slugging .160 in this situation).

Tuesday night, the St. Paul Saints had three tries with the bases loaded, and hit two home runs.

Jair Camargo went deep in the fifth, turning a 4-2 deficit into a 6-4 lead, and Chris Williams added four more insurance runs in the eighth, as St. Paul won for the eighth time in its last nine games by beating the Iowa Cubs, 10-4.

The Saints have hit seven grand slams this year; the Twins have seven hits with the bases loaded this year.

Maybe we’re all just watching the wrong team?

I have to admit right now that I mistakenly thought Camargo was an organizational-depth veteran catcher, probably because I got him confused with former Atlanta and Philadelphia third baseman Johan Camargo - but he’s not even 24 years old yet, and he’s built like a brick… brickhouse. He’s struggled a bit so far in his first go-round at Triple-A, slugging just .357, but he’s hit five homers in 31 games and this was already his second grand slam of the year.

Also I think more people should know that while the Twins have a fishing vest and fishing pole for players when they return to the dugout after hitting a home run, the Saints have a hat that looks like a hot dog, which is pretty on-brand.

Matt Wallner hit a double and threw out a runner at home plate from right field, and also still isn’t Max Kepler. Jose Miranda hit two doubles, too.

Jordan Balazovic got his first Triple-A win ever, after striking out seven in 3.1 innings as the first in a parade of relievers.

Wednesday, the Lynx return to the court in New York, which could be tough - the Liberty might be the second-best team in the league, behind the Las Vegas Aces.

The Twins - assuming they don’t just forfeit twice and head to Toronto early - are taking on the Rays again, and the Saints are home again against Iowa.

On the soccer front, the Minnesota Aurora are back in action, taking on the Chicago Dutch Lions at home and trying to extend their unbeaten, un-tied, un-scored-upon record.

I’ll be checking, of course - to see if the Twins got no-hit, mostly.

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.