MINNEAPOLIS — Cade Povich pitched shutout ball into the sixth, Ryan O’Hearn and Colton Cowser homered and the Baltimore Orioles eliminated the Minnesota Twins from postseason contention with a 7-2 victory Friday night.
The Orioles wrapped up the top American League wild-card spot, and will host either Detroit or Kansas City in the opening round next week.
“To get home field through the wild card is huge,” Orioles manager Brandon Hyde said. “We’re going to be pumped to play in front of our fans. There’s going to be a lot of energy and excitement in the ballpark.”
By the fifth inning, the Twins knew the Tigers had won and the Royals had lost, meaning a victory would keep their playoff hopes alive. But they could muster only two hits through the first eight innings and trailed 7-0.
At their high-water mark of the season on Aug. 17, the Twins were 70-53 and had a five-game cushion in the wild-card race. Since then, they are 12-25.
“It was clearly beyond a disappointing way to end a run and what was, and appeared to be, a promising season that we had going,” said Twins manager Rocco Baldelli, whose team was the defending AL Central champion.
Povich (3-9) gave up only two hits and walked one while striking out two in 5⅔ innings. The rookie left-hander was making his first career start against the team that selected him in the third round of the 2021 draft. The Twins traded him to Baltimore a year later as the centerpiece of a package used to acquire reliever Jorge Lopez.
“I’m just treating every start like it’s kind of a tryout for the postseason,” said Povich, who went 2-2 with a 2.60 ERA in five September starts.
Twins starter Pablo López (15-10) gave up two runs, six hits, three walks and had eight strikeouts in 5⅔ innings.
“It’s tough,” López said about the Twins’ collapse. “We were riding the high for so long. Everything was going well. Things were fun. Things were clicking. And then nothing was clicking.”
O’Hearn started the scoring for the Orioles with a two-run homer to deep right in the second inning.
The Orioles loaded the bases with one out in the fifth. But López struck out Ramón Urías on his career-high 111th pitch of the night. Then reliever Caleb Thielbar retired Gunnar Henderson on a grounder to keep it 2-0.
Cowser tagged Thielbar’s pitch for his 24th homer of the season in the seventh. Baltimore tacked on four more runs in the eighth on five singles off reliever Kody Funderburk.
The Twins broke up the shutout in the ninth on Carlos Santana‘s two-run single.
Now, the Twins are looking at an offseason spent trying to figure out what went wrong and how to avoid a repeat in the future.
“You don’t react emotionally in these moments. Really, you look at it big picture,” Baldelli said. “You look at how the season went as a whole. We’re also going to look at how the last six weeks went, because that’s what a lot of us are feeling right now.”