The Mariners crushed the Twins 11-2 on June 24, 2025, with homers from Julio Rodríguez & Cal Raleigh. Can the struggling Twins stop their mid-season collapse?
StatPro MLB Beat Reporter
Another night at Target Field, another lopsided loss. The Minnesota Twins' mid-season collapse plunged to new depths Tuesday, as the Seattle Mariners dismantled them in an 11-2 rout. The loss marks the team's 14th defeat in their last 17 games, a brutal stretch that has seen a once-promising season spiral into a desperate search for answers.
The Twins have allowed 133 runs in their last 17 games, an average of 7.8 per game.
The game was blown wide open in a disastrous third inning. After a quiet start, the Mariners erupted for six runs against starter Bailey Ober, highlighted by back-to-back home runs from Julio Rodríguez and Luke Raley. While Ober managed to settle down and pitch seven innings, striking out seven, the damage was irreversible. Seattle wasn't done, adding to the pain with two more homers, including Cal Raleigh's MLB-leading 32nd of the year. The only flicker of life from the Twins' offense came in the sixth when Trevor Larnach and Carlos Correa hit back-to-back solo homers, a brief and ultimately meaningless interruption to the Mariners' dominance.
Tuesday's blowout loss is a symptom of a larger problem: a pitching staff stretched to its absolute limit. The losses of starters Pablo López and Zebby Matthews to shoulder injuries earlier in June have had a cascading effect. The team has been forced to call upon its Triple-A depth, thrusting Bailey Ober and Louis Varland into critical roles. While Varland has impressively transitioned into a high-leverage bullpen arm alongside Griffin Jax, the starting rotation lacks the stability to consistently give the team a chance to win, a fact underscored by the 133 runs surrendered over this 17-game slide.
If you're looking for a glimmer of hope, you'll have to look past the major league roster for now. The injury bug has also hit the farm system, sidelining top prospects Walker Jenkins, Emmanuel Rodriguez, and Luke Keaschall. However, it's not all bad news down on the farm. Pitchers Dasan Hill and Connor Prielipp are showing encouraging progress, while infielders Kaelen Culpepper and Kyle DeBarge are making names for themselves. With Zebby Matthews already having graduated to the bigs, the system continues to produce talent, offering a reminder that even in the darkest of times, the future may hold brighter days.
It's hard to find silver linings in an 11-2 drubbing that extends a miserable slump. The Twins are in a tailspin, and the path out is unclear. While the emergence of Louis Varland in the bullpen is a positive development, it's not enough to plug a dam that's bursting at the seams. Until the starting pitching can consistently keep them in games and the offense can muster more than fleeting moments of power, nights like this threaten to become the norm. The team desperately needs to find a way to stop the bleeding, and they need to find it fast.
