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When the Minnesota Twins signed veteran reliever Alex Colomé over the winter, they planned on him serving as their closer as they won a third consecutive American League Central title. There’s plenty of time remaining this season for that vision to come to fruition, but it doesn’t look so promising after nearly four weeks.
Colomé, who has already blown three saves, authored another disastrous outing on Tuesday after entering in the eighth inning of a one-run game versus Cleveland. His appearance started promisingly enough, as he struck out the first batter he faced. It was all downhill from there, as he either walked or hit four of the next five batters he saw, resulting in a run crossing the plate and an early hook from manager Rocco Baldelli.
Colomé’s final line saw him record two outs, walk three batters and hit another, strike out two, and permit two runs (one scored against the subsequent reliever). He threw 30 pitches, but only 13 of them went for strikes. Colomé has now made nine appearances this season; he’s yielded at least one run in six of them, including each of the past three. For the year, Colomé now has an 8.31 ERA. The Twins’ bullpen as a whole, meanwhile, has the most losses in the majors (eight) and the fourth-most meltdowns (17).
Predictably, given the struggles of their highest-leveraged reliever, the Twins have had trouble gaining traction. Tuesday’s loss dropped them to 7-15 on the season. Five of those losses have come in extra innings; four as part of seven-inning doubleheaders; and two were regulation-length losses in which they led in the eighth inning or later. It’s no wonder why Baldelli called Minnesota’s April “about as tough a stretch as I’ve ever seen in professional baseball,” as part of his postgame press conference.
The Twins will conclude their series with Cleveland on Wednesday before taking Thursday off. They’ll host the first-place Kansas City Royals for three games over the weekend. The Twins will enter Wednesday trailing Kansas City by seven games.