Minnesota Twins – Losing Is A Disease

How do the Minnesota Twins Get Back to Winning? The Minnesota Twins are 1-9 in their last 10 games. It’s not difficult to see they’re in a losing funk right now. When you’re losing & have been losing, you find ways to keep losing because you’ve lost confidence in yourself.

The Psychology of Losing

It’s amazing what losing (& winning) does to any player & team. We’ve all seen it before. When a team is on a losing streak or a player is struggling, their confidence is low so maybe their technique gets bad & they do things differently than they normally would. They start to not trust their own ability and also their teammate’s ability. The result is they make unusual mistakes & if something goes bad they get a “here we go, again” feeling instead of just forgetting about it and getting back to playing the way they know they can.

This is why players, teams and maybe everyone needs coaches or mentors.

They’ll reestablish the confidence in yourself and your game to get you back to playing/doing whatever you do how you’re meant to do it.

We’ve all probably had bad managers or friends or just acquaintances that brought you down or said something like, “don’t screw this up!” I got a promotion & my manager at the time said, “If you screw this up, you’re done.” Well, that was inspiring, especially since I had never done that job before. Luckily, I already knew the guy was a jerk so it didn’t phase me one bit & I excelled at that job.

I’ve also always been fascinated at how professional teams handle their players & develop them into what they can be & maybe even past what they thought they could be. Usually, that’s with brutal honesty like, “Hey, you were terrible tonight!” but that’s not the end of it. They don’t just destroy the player & walk away. They take them into a video session & show them what they did bad or wrong and then tell them what to do differently so they don’t make the same mistake again.

It’s basically the difference between fans & coaches. Fans say, “They’re terrible & I’m done with them,” “Bench them” or “Send them down to the minors.” It’s one reason it’s difficult to follow sports & be a fan of any team.

It’s hard to believe any good coach ever told a player they were the reason they lost the game. Teams lose games. Players try to play their best every time and make physical & mental mistakes every now & then.

Yesterday, the Minnesota Twins should’ve won a baseball game they scored 12 runs in but they’re a losing team right now so…physical mistakes were made and they lost on a walkoff error on a routine play that is probably made 99% of the time regardless of who’s in position to make that play. There were actually 2 plays like that.

2nd Guessing is the Easiest Job in the World

There is no easier job in the world than to make decisions after you know what happened. That’s why that job doesn’t exist. Think of every mistake or wrong decision you ever made and see if you’d do it the exact same way again.

Minnesota Twins Manager Rocco Baldelli made what a lot of people are calling questionable decisions in yesterday’s game:

• He pinch-ran for 3B Josh Donaldson with INF Travis Blankenhorn to begin the 10th inning, taking out his great defensive 3rd baseman
• He had RHP Alex Colomé pitch the 10th when he had RHP Jorge Alcala (although he did pitch the day before) & LHP Devin Smeltzer as other options in the bullpen
• He put Luis Arraez at 3rd base & Travis Blankenhorn at 2nd base

Donaldson would’ve scored just like Blankenhorn on Byron Buxton’s 10th inning 2-run home run. Alex Colomé threw 49 pitches & 29 strikes in 2 innings. He threw 19 pitches in the 9th when he blew his 3rd save of the season to send the game into extra innings. He then got a flyout & a strikeout on 10 pitches to begin the bottom of the 10th. He walked the next batter on 5 pitches and walked the batter after that on 6 pitches to load the bases. He then got a ground ball to 2nd base but Travis Blankenhorn didn’t make the play so a run scored to make it a 1-run game. He then got another ground ball, this one to 3rd base off the bat of Ramón Laureano & he has some speed but Arraez fielded it and overthrew 1st base to allow Oakland to score 2 runs and walk-off and extend their winning streak to 11 games.

Rocco Baldelli Interview

After the game, Rocco Baldelli spoke about his decision to replace Josh Donaldson:

“In extra innings, if you don’t find a way to put a run on the board, you’re going to end up losing a lot of those games & doing everything possible to put that first run on the board is instrumental to find ways to win those games. There are going to be times where we’re going to be pinch-running for guys in those situations. We’ve done it in the past a fair amount & we’ll continue to do it. We have to get the guys that give us the best chance to score out there and that’s what we did and we pinch-ran for him and took him out of the game.”

“It’s been a helluva trip in not a good way. Today was a game where…we’re finding ways to not win games even games we should be winning. What we really saw today was something that we haven’t seen a ton from our group and I stand in the front of it and take responsibility for all of it. It was a very difficult day. Nothing came easy. Our guys continued to fight and continued to play hard. We got to the point in the last inning where we needed to make one of two routine plays, just routine ground balls, and we weren’t able to do it and I think it really comes down to that. It’s as simple as that. I think we played a game we should’ve won and we’re not winning those games right now.

There was no blame given, just facts about what happened. It’s easy to say well, he shouldn’t have pinch-ran for Josh Donaldson and Luis Arraez makes the play at 2nd if he puts Travis Blankenhorn at 3rd instead and Alex Colomé shouldn’t have been in there & Jorge Alcala and/or Devin Smeltzer should be able to be depended on to get one out.

If only Mr. Baldelli could see into the future so he could make a different decision. It’s not likely there was any hesitation to make the moves he made because he has confidence that every one of his players can make those plays the majority of the time. Errors will happen but a manager thinks from a positive standpoint so while this loss was disappointing, he knows what he has with the 2021 Minnesota Twins and he expects they will get out of this and start to play very good baseball very soon if not in the very next game.

There are 145 more baseball games to be played so the Minnesota Twins can & likely will get past this and become a better baseball team as soon as tomorrow when they start a 3-game homestand against the Pittsburgh Pirates with LHP J.A. Happ on the mound against RHP JT Brubaker at 7pm on Bally Sports North.

It’s their first night game at home so maybe they can get in a routine of normal baseball schedule, get some batting practice in and get back to winning.

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