Twins' disastrous doubleheader at Boston leaves them outside playoff picture with six games left

BOSTON – The records say the Minnesota Twins are no longer a playoff team. The eye test matches those analytics.

The Twins closed a horrific road trip with a historic day at Fenway Park on Sunday, falling to the Red Sox by a collective score of 17-4. Pablo López allowed seven runs, matching his season high, in just four innings of an 8-1 loss in the first game, and Twins relievers gave up eight runs to score in a span of 14 batters in the nightcap, a 9-3 drubbing.

The result is an 81-75 record, which trails both free-falling Kansas City and surging Detroit by one game for the final two wild-card entries in next week’s American League playoffs. It’s the first time the Twins haven’t been in playoff position since May 2.

And while it would be easy to blame the pitching for Sunday’s disaster, it also was the continuation of a month’s worth of eerie silence from the batting order. The Twins collected 25 hits in 30 innings during this series, but 24 of them were singles, including all 12 hits Sunday.

Twins hitters went homer-free in the three-game series, the first time that has happened to them in Fenway since Aug. 9-11, 2002. They haven’t homered in 51 consecutive innings, in fact, their longest power drought of the season.

It’s no wonder they have lost 13 of their past 18 games, and eight of their last 10 road games. Now they trudge home for the season’s final six games, beginning Tuesday with three against the last-place Marlins and then three against the playoff-bound Orioles.

López turned the afternoon’s first game into a rout fairly quickly, by allowing Red Sox first baseman Triston Casas to hit three-run home runs in both the first and third innings. Casas hit his third homer of the day two innings later, launching Brent Headrick’s second major-league pitch in more than a year into the seats beyond the Red Sox bullpen in center field.

“There’s no sugar-coating it — not the performance I was looking for, especially with what this game means,” said López, whose ERA climbed to 4.11 with the outing. “Didn’t provide length, didn’t provide quality. I didn’t do my part.”

Lots of that to go around, of course. Royce Lewis went 6 for 27 on the road trip, and hasn’t driven in a run since Sept. 11. Carlos Santana may lead the Twins in homers and RBIs, but he was 1 for 12 during the trip with runners in scoring position.

In the second game, rookie Zebby Matthews shut out the Red Sox for 4 2/3 innings and led 2-0 thanks to four consecutive Twins singles in the top of the fifth, but he gave up a two-out double to Ceddanne Rafaela in the fifth that brought Twins manager Rocco Baldelli out of the dugout. Unwilling to allow the rookie to face the top of the order a third time, the manager brought in lefthander Cole Irvin, claimed off waivers by the Twins from Baltimore last week.

It didn’t go well, though it rarely does for Irvin in this ballpark; Irvin entered the game with a 9.24 ERA at Fenway in 12 2/3 career innings. Irvin walked Jarren Duran on four pitches, then left a letter-high 2-1 changeup in the strike zone for Romy Gonzalez. His three-run blast landed atop the Green Monster in deep left-center, and turned the Twins’ brief lead into a deficit.

The Twins’ response? They were retired in the sixth on only five pitches by Boston starter Kutter Crawford.

It sparked something in the Red Sox, too. They strung together five hits, including two doubles, in the bottom of the inning to demoralize the Twins and end the road trip on a rotten note.

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