Twins come back once, can’t do it twice in loss to Braves

As Twins manager Rocco Baldelli sat down to address the media on Tuesday night, he took a light blue marker to the piece of paper on the podium that read “Stay humble,” and crossed out the last four letters of the second word.

He then wrote out a new word.

“Stay hungry,” the paper now reads.

That’s the message Baldelli is hoping to impart to his team, which dropped its seventh of nine games on Tuesday night.

The Twins competed one four-run comeback in the game. Doing it twice was simply not in the cards. After rallying back to tie game in the eighth inning, the Twins fell behind by four runs again in the 10th. This time, their rally came up short. The Twins fell 8-6 in 10 innings at Target Field after the Atlanta Braves tagged Jhoan Duran for four runs.

“I’m a pitcher, and sometimes you can have a day like that,” said Duran, who retired just one of the six batters he faced. “It’s not like every day you throw good, you know?”

The loss was the third straight for the Twins (72-60) and was yet another tough defeat in a week and a half that seems to be full of them.

After a 10-6 loss to the Braves (72-60) one night before, Baldelli addressed his team. First baseman Carlos Santana, who made multiple highlight reel grabs in Tuesday’s game, took a simple message from it.

“Keep (focused),” Santana said of Baldelli’s speech. “One month left. Try to finish strong.”

The Twins have exactly 30 games remaining in their season. They are in position to win a wild card berth and are trying to chase down Cleveland and Kansas City, who now are tied atop the American League Central Division, 2 1/2 games in front of the Twins.

“There’s a lot of high hopes for this club, a lot of lofty goals. But if we want to achieve those goals, we’ve got to play better baseball,” catcher Ryan Jeffers said. “Yeah, we understand we’re relying on some young guys, we’re relying on young guys to give us really important roles. We’re depleted with injuries. There’s a lot of things you can point fingers at. But at the end of the day, we believe in this team, and we know we’ve got to play better.”

They’re doing so without some of their top players — Carlos Correa, Byron Buxton and Joe Ryan are among those who are on the injured list — but they still firmly believe in the group they have on the field.

That group rallied in the seventh inning for three runs after threatening to break through in each of the first six innings to cut into Atlanta’s four-run lead.

The Braves had scored two runs in the second on a home run by Michael Harris II off starter Simeon Woods Richardson and another two in the fifth on a Marcell Ozuna single, but Trevor Larnach’s single in the eighth inning completed the comeback.

They showed some fight two innings later after Duran gave up the four runs, stringing together three straight singles to produce a pair of runs before Matt Wallner struck out to end the game.

“We still have 30 games left to play,” Baldelli said. “There’s a lot of time do so some damage, so it’s time to do some damage.”

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