Jul. 18—Josh Donaldson is always one to offer a pointed, frank assessment when one is needed, and Sunday, after his team was swept by the Tigers, shut out in two of the three games, one was needed.
“We definitely haven’t played well this year. Our record reflects that. It’s kind of beating a dead horse,” the Twins’ third baseman said. “The only thing that we can do at this point is focusing on what we can control. That’s bringing energy, that’s our attitude and that’s going out there and competing.”
Even the energy was missing on Sunday, at least according to starting pitcher J.A. Happ, who took one for the team in the Twins’ 7-0 loss to the Tigers at Comerica Park.
In Happ’s assessment, the team “didn’t have a ton of energy” as it slid farther down in the standings with three losses to Detroit over the course of the past two days.
“I think the game was close to kind of turning the other way early on and it didn’t quite happen and then I wasn’t able to keep them off the board and it kind of turned there on us pretty quick,” Happ said.
The Twins (39-53) had their opportunities in the early innings, hitting five balls with an exit velocity above 100 miles per hour off Wily Peralta in the first three innings and coming away with nothing to show for it.
Peralta shut out the Twins for seven innings, and Happ, who was efficient with his pitches, was left to soak up seven innings, an important effort for bullpen preservation in a game sandwiched between two doubleheaders.
Happ who was victimized by some soft contact — and then some very hard contact — gave up three runs in the fifth inning and two-run home runs to Jonathan Schoop and Jeimer Candelario in the fifth and seventh. But Happ’s seven-run outing seemed to be the least of manager Rocco Baldelli’s concerns after the game.
Baldelli, instead, was more fixated on the mental mistakes that plagued the Twins, starting in the first inning, when Trevor Larnach ran into an out trying to stretch a single into a double.
“Fundamentally on the mental side of things, it was an unsound day today at the park. We made several mistakes; some of them bit us a little bit, some of them didn’t,” Baldelli said. “We’re going to have to play better baseball, like I said. Both fundamentally on the field, executing baseball plays, and also thinking ahead. Mentally being ahead of the game, making good decisions out there on the field. Today was not a good day for that for us.”
There was also a moment early on in the game when Donaldson was getting ready to receive a pitch from Peralta but Luis Arraez, who was on second base, had his back to him, looking towards the outfielders. Donaldson called time and was later seen having a spirited conversation with Arraez in the dugout.
“Luis, he’s locked in 99.9 percent of the time,” Donaldson said. “I think it was just one of those instances. We talked and everything’s good.”
With a young group that is likely getting even younger after the July 30 trade deadline passes, mistakes — physical and mental — are bound to happen. And Baldelli’s intention is to use those as teaching moments so the team does not repeat them moving forward.
What that means can look different on a case by case basis — sometimes it’s individual players meeting with coaches to walk through something, sometimes it’s a broader team meeting.
And that might help the Twins moving forward, but it’ll come too late to help the group on Sunday.
“In time this group will be a more experienced group, and we’re going be able to be the ones taking advantage of the opposition, of not making those types of errors out there,” Baldelli said. “Today just wasn’t one of those days. Today was a day we just have to recognize (that) we didn’t play well.”