Minnesota United seems to have things going in the right direction, having won four of its last five games. And for the first time in more than two months, the Loons’ efforts also meant that the Allianz Field crowd got to sing “Wonderwall.”

Minnesota’s 3-0 win against Colorado was its first home win since July 20, and its first win of any kind against a playoff team since May 18th — an important milestone, as Minnesota closes in on a playoff berth of its own.

The Loons ended the night eight points clear of tenth-place FC Dallas. So, with just three games to play, only a complete collapse would see Minnesota slide out of the postseason picture. The Loons, in fact, have put themselves squarely in the competition to climb to seventh or above, which would mean they’d avoid the 8-vs-9, wild-card game entirely.

The Loons opened the scoring just 16 minutes into the night, in a rather unexpected manner — and nobody was more surprised than striker Kelvin Yeboah.

Robin Lod, on the right of the goal, attempted to volley a long cross from Joseph Rosales. His attempted shot was wayward enough to go down into the ground, bounce up, and hit an unsuspecting Yeboah in the face, but the mistake deflected off Yeboah and bounced just inside the near post, leaving Colorado goalkeeper Zack Steffen no chance at all.

The assist was Lod’s 15th of the season, tying a Loons single-season team record; it was also his assist that was most likely to result in him having to buy dinner for a teammate, as an apology. For his part, Yeboah became just the fourth player in league history to score in five of his first six matches.

Two minutes into the second half, Yeboah doubled the Minnesota advantage — this time, with full knowledge of the situation. Midfielder Joaquín Pereyra drove into the Colorado area, next to Hassani Dotson, and the two combined to get the ball to Yeboah near the penalty spot, and the striker made no mistake, taking a touch and then driving home his seventh goal in just six games for the Loons.

It was part of what was a pretty comprehensive performance from Minnesota, through the first hour of the match. Minnesota held Colorado to just one shot on target, and that from outside the penalty area, through the first 60 minutes. Combined with Yeboah’s two goals, it allowed the Loons to sit back into a comfortable defensive shape, and look for opportunities to break forward.

Dotson finished off the scoring for Minnesota with a pretty solo goal. Dotson picked up the ball near the right sideline, carried past four Colorado defenders to the top of the penalty area, and beat Steffen inside the near post to put the Allianz Field crowd into party mode.

Minnesota now has 12 points from the six games since the end of the midseason break for the Leagues Cup, just about the same rate that put Minnesota near the top of the league standings before players started departing for summer tournaments. Manager Eric Ramsay has always insisted that his team was less like the squad that struggled all summer, and more like the one that exceeded expectations in the early going.

It remains to be seen where the Loons end up this season. But for the first time in months, on Saturday, the faithful in St. Paul got to see what Ramsay was talking about.

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Like they’ve done for the past six months, the Twins showed up to the ballpark on Saturday and prepared to play a baseball game. Only this one, for the first time since March, simply didn’t matter.

Their postseason fate was sealed a day earlier when they were eliminated from the wild card race. Saturday’s 9-2 loss at Target Field to the Baltimore Orioles only added a small insult to a much larger injury.

Zebby Matthews, a rookie who began the season at Class-A Advanced Cedar Rapids and was thrust into service due to an injury to Joe Ryan, could not contain the playoff-bound Orioles, giving up six runs in three innings.

It was part of a night in which the Orioles (90-71) scored in six of nine innings and the Twins (82-79), whose demise has in part come as their offense has tailed off, was silenced by Baltimore up until the ninth inning with two outs when Ryan Jeffers hit a two-run home run.

The loss was yet another in a string of them for a Twins team that reached a season-high 17 games above .500 on August 17 and has followed that by going 12-26.

In the aftermath of their elimination, as they grapple with the fact that they will be watching from home next week when the playoffs begin, the Twins are still trying to digest what went wrong.

“We’re in this spot where we have to spend the whole offseason thinking about this and looking for ways to make sure moving forward this doesn’t happen again,” shortstop Carlos Correa said.

The Twins searched for those answers during the season. They tried being patient in their approach to problem solving, manager Rocco Baldelli said. They tried more aggressive directions.

It didn’t matter.

“We tried several methods and that’s the part where, yeah, that will irk me,” Baldelli said. “That will continue to irk me and bother me because you always believe that there is an answer. You always believe that there is a path that could work. And in six weeks … the several paths that we went down, they all ended in the same place.”

There’s plenty of blame to go around, from ownership, which slashed payroll in the offseason, to the front office, to coaches and players.

Correa, the team’s highest-paid player and a leader in the clubhouse, tried to shoulder much of it himself after the shortstop missed much of the second half dealing with plantar fasciitis.

“If you have anybody to blame, blame me for going down for two months and not being part of the team,” Correa said. “I think that’s one of the main reasons.”

Injuries — not just to Correa — played a part. So did bullpen blowups. So did a rotation that put extra strain on the bullpen. So did the offense’s dramatic drop off. Royce Lewis, one of those who tailed off in the second half, said he “ran out of gas.”

A collapse like the Twins’ has so many different root causes, so many paths for leadership to investigate, dissect and try to understand what went wrong and how to best move forward.

Now that the season is almost over, that’s their next challenge.

“Whenever we (go) through the whole self-reflection, it’s not only on the field but off the field,” starter Pablo López said. “There’s going to be a lot of talk on what we could have done better.”

Rocco Baldelli may have gotten rid of his X account years ago now, but the Twins’ manager does not need to see angry posts directed towards him on social media to understand the fan dissatisfaction.

He hears it at the ballpark and knows that there are people calling for his job.

That’s part of managing a Major League Baseball team, he said. But personally, Baldelli, who has been in his job since the 2019 season, said he is not stressed out about his own job security.

“I’ve never stressed out about that,” Baldelli said. “I stress out about the way we play. I stress out about the results and the process for us to get those results. I don’t go to bed thinking about my job. I go to bed thinking about the job we do and how we need to do it better, and that’s the reality of it. We’ll let things play out.”

The Twins were officially eliminated from postseason contention on Friday night after their poor play stretched on over the final six weeks of the season, allowing them to be passed in the wild card race by the Detroit Tigers.

While the playoffs seemed like a certainty at one point, the collapse has cratered fan morale and led to the fanbase calling for changes at the top level of the organization, which includes more than just Baldelli.

“The fans, I think, have a right to feel almost any way they choose. I believe that,” Baldelli said. “Minnesota Twins fans showed me last year when we were in the playoffs amazing things, things that can change the outcome of a game in favor of their team. … You can’t have greater passion than what I saw. If I’m going to accept that and take that and enjoy that, then I’ll also take the criticism when things don’t go well.”

But while Baldelli is OK with shouldering the criticism, calls for him to be replaced, starting pitcher Bailey Ober said, aren’t “super fair.” Ober said the blame for the Twins missing the playoffs should instead rest mostly on the players within the clubhouse.

“Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion. If the players hear that, I don’t think anyone’s agreeing with that. It’s like, seriously, can’t you see what’s going on?” Ober said. “He’s not the one at fault for this mishap that happened. We didn’t get it done.”

Roster moves

The Twins made a slew of roster moves ahead of Saturday’s game, placing Jose Miranda and Trevor Larnach on the injured list and optioning reliever Kody Funderburk. Michael Helman, DaShawn Keirsey Jr. and Diego Castillo were called up to take their spots on the roster.

Miranda has missed the last couple of games with a low back strain. It’s the second time this season he has landed on the injured list with a low back strain, also dealing with the issue in July. The infielder’s numbers took a dive after his first injury, and he finished the season with no home runs and just six runs batted in in 45 second-half games.

Larnach was placed on the injured list with a left hamstring strain, something that has been bothering him for quite some time. The outfielder finished hitting .259 with a .771 OPS and 115 OPS+, a number that represents 15 percent better than the league-average hitter, in 112 games.

Briefly

While the Twins are no longer in playoff contention, Baldelli said it’s his anticipation that Ober will start on Sunday in the season finale. … Sunday’s game will begin at 2:10 p.m. Every game being played around the league will begin within a 15-minute period.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Gophers coach P.J. Fleck was not willing to publicly wade into it, but FOX rules analyst Mike Pereira dove right in. And the Big Ten Conference mostly abstained on the topic.

The Gophers had scored 14 straight points to cut Michigan’s lead to 27-24 on Saturday when Matt Kingsbury was called offsides on an onside kick attempt with 1:37 remaining in the game. Minnesota had recovered the kick and would have had possession at the Wolverines’ 39.

But after the 5-yard penalty, Michigan recovered the re-kick and iced the win at Michigan Stadium.

“I don’t think he’s offside,” Pereira said as replays were shown on the TV broadcast. “If you take a look at the high shot, the all-22 (players view), I don’t think he is breaking the plane.

“It’s so technical,” Pereira added. “To me, he’s not. It’s awfully close. Nothing can be done: not reviewable, obviously.”

Color commentator Joel Klatt wanted more, with the replay far away on the other sideline. “Boy, you would love it to be something that was clear and obvious,” he said. “That one, it looked like just a hair.”

If that. But Fleck was not willing to get close to a call that came down to a foot or maybe inches.

“I have not seen the last play, nor does one play win or lose you the game,” Fleck said. “Everyone is going to focus on that. I’m not going to sit here and get fined and all those other things. I have more respect for my boss and the University of Minnesota and the Big Ten to say that is one play.”

Fleck was asked by a reporter to share what he saw and heard from officials on the U sideline about the under-the-microscope call at the Big House.

“I was 10 yards away,” Fleck said. “I was down where the ball was going to be received because that is (what) I really want to see.”

It was the official standing on the U sideline at the kickoff line who made the call. It was directly in front of him. Kingsbury was on the near-side numbers when the call was made. The flag was thrown immediately after Kingsbury and teammates crossed the line.

The official told Fleck that Kingsbury “broke the plane.”

And that is pretty much that, according to the Big Ten Conference.

The Big Ten has a pool report policy for reporters to ask officials questions about calls in games, but that is reserved for clarification or explanation of rules, not questions with binary answers to, for example, whether a player was offsides or not, Big Ten spokesman Paul Kennedy told the Pioneer Press on Saturday evening.

The conference also doesn’t give statements on judgement calls in games because the multitudes of those calls across the schedule each Saturday, Kennedy shared. That policy doesn’t change for calls when the stakes are magnified in late and close games such as Saturday in Michigan.

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