Imagine the excitement in the Twins' draft room three years ago if the scouts had known that the lefthander they took in the third round would someday stand on the Target Field mound and pitch his team to a victory that locked in its playoff seeding.
Cade Povich actually accomplished that Friday.
Now imagine those scouts if you told them that Povich's brilliant two-hits-in-5⅔-innings performance would come against the Twins, and in fact would eliminate the team that drafted him and paid him a $500,000 signing bonus from playoff contention.
Baseball can be a cruel game.
Mathematical elimination finally arrived for the Twins with Friday's 7-2 surrender at the hands of the former Twins prospect the instrument of their demise. Kansas City lost in Atlanta to keep the Twins' dreams of a miracle alive, but Minnesota's own offense, which managed only two hits in the first eight innings, killed it.
"It's a big, big level of disappointment. We came into the year hoping to recreate, if not surpass, feelings that we were able to experience in a really, really good 2023 season" and postseason, said Pablo López, who started three consecutive Twins losses to close the season. "We can only hope, as a group, we do all the self-reflection [necessary] just to find those moments and figure out all the things we could have done better, the things we could have done right."
That process begins now, manager Rocco Baldelli said.
"Really, you look at it big picture. You look at how the season went as a whole," Baldelli said. "We're also going to look at how the last six weeks went, because that's what a lot of us are feeling right now, a lot of us are talking about right now. And understandably so."
On this night, what went wrong was that Povich, dealt to the Orioles at the 2022 trade deadline so the Twins could acquire long-gone reliever Jórge López, outpitched Pablo López, and the Baltimore bullpen put the finishing touches on the Twins' late-season collapse.
"My fiancée is from [Minnesota], being closer to family, that's what meant a lot to me," said Povich, who pitched for Nebraska before the Twins drafted him. "Then, just trying to give us an opportunity to stay in Baltimore for the wild card," which the Orioles clinched with the victory. As the top-seeded AL wild card team, they will play either Detroit or Kansas City on Tuesday — while the Twins scatter to their winter homes.
That's what Povich and the Orioles accomplished by shutting down the Twins lineup. One night after going 2-for-19 with runners in scoring position, the Twins went hitless (0-for-5) on the rare occasions anyone advanced that far until Carlos Santana's two-run single in the bottom of the ninth. Byron Buxton lined a two-out double into the left-field corner in the first inning, but Povich retired the next 11 hitters in order, before issuing a one-out walk to Kyle Farmer in the fifth.
The Orioles' rookie swiftly ended that "threat" with a routine fly out and pop up, then finished his night with two outs in the sixth, having given up a second hit, Manual Margot's double. Jacob Webb relieved Povich, ended the inning on two pitches when Buxton lined out to center, and with it the Twins' last chance to advance a runner to third base while the game was still in doubt.
BOXSCORE: Baltimore 7, Twins 2
The loss marked the 10th time in September that the Twins failed to score three runs.
Pablo López wasn't quite as ineffective as in the Twins' 8-1 loss in Boston last Sunday, but he had trouble finding the strike zone, walking three batters in 5⅔ innings.
The righthander surrendered a towering two-run home run to Ryan O'Hearn in the second inning, but otherwise pitched out of trouble despite allowing seven hits.
Caleb Thielbar later served up rookie Colton Cowser's 24th homer of the season. And Kody Funderburk, in his first appearance since the All-Star break, was torched for four runs on five hits in the eighth inning, allowing many of the announced 26,058 in attendance to boo, then depart.
Santana helped the Twins avoid the shutout in the final inning when he drove home Carlos Correa, who had walked, and Buxton, who doubled.
"I'm beyond disappointed," Baldelli said. "We didn't finish the season strong. And we should look — I'll speak for myself — I will look at myself in the mirror. I think all of our guys will do the same."
Well, they'll have plenty of extra time now.
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