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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NHL teams placed another 29 players on waivers Saturday as the league pares down its training camp rosters. The Wild were not one of them, but that will change, in one form or another, on Sunday.

The Wild will play the fourth of their six preseason games Sunday evening at Xcel Energy Center, triggering the first big camp cuts of the fall. Some might come before a 5 p.m. puck drop against Dallas, some after.

“It could be a little bit of both depending on who’s in the practice group and who’s in the game group,” coach John Hynes said Saturday after a pair of practices in front of season-ticket holders at the X.

The Wild’s AHL team in Des Moines begins camp on Monday morning.

Because this is a team heavy with veterans on long-term deals, it was evident when camp started Sept. 19 that there were only one or two spots open for a prospect or free agent to make the NHL roster out of camp. That remains the case with less than two weeks before the Oct. 10 regular-season opener against Columbus in St. Paul.

At season’s end last spring, there was a sense that rookies Marat Khusnutdinov and Liam Ohgren had the inside track, but that has changed during camp. Instead, forward Jakub Lauko, acquired in the trade that sent Vinni Lettieri to Boston, has made the best early impression among young players, and veteran free agents signed to lucrative two-way deals have made strong cases, as well.

Lauko, 24, scored a goal in each of his two preseason games and will be in the lineup against the Stars on Sunday. He has been conspicuous in games and in practice, eager to show his new team that he’s ready for his first permanent promotion after playing 60 regular-season games with the Bruins (2-8–10) last spring.

“He’s got a motor. You can tell that he loves the game. He asks questions, you know, in meetings,” Hynes said. “I like his drive on the ice, his ability to skate, compete and impact the game. You’ve seen it, really, every day. Every time we’ve seen him practice, or the games, he has made an impact.”

If Lauko seems to be cementing that fourth-line winger role opposite Freddy Gaudreau, a few of the veterans who signed free-agent contracts in July are making a case to center that line when the season starts.

Brendan Gaunce, 30, and Ben Jones, 25, have played well in games. Jones scored on a breakaway in Friday’s 8-5 victory over Winnipeg at the X, two days after missing on a breakaway in a 5-2 loss at Dallas — and he acknowledged that went through his head as he charged at Jets veteran Connor Hellebuyck on Friday.

“I was trying not to miss again,” he said.

Instead, he faked with his forehand and scored on the backhand.

“I’ve just kind of been taking every day by day, take it kind of one step at a time, and see what each day brings,” Jones said. “See if I’m going to be able to play another game, and just bring what I bring and try and be a Swiss Army Knife for this team and help wherever I can.”

Jones, Gaunce, Travis Boyd, Devin Shore and Reese Johnson all signed two-way contracts this summer that combined are worth more than $2 million in minor league dollars. That’s a lot of money, a clear indication that Wild general manager Bill Guerin wants physical forwards he can trust — and can contribute — when they’re called up this season.

Gaunce, a 6-foot-3, 220-pound forward, has a two-way, two-year deal after spending last season in the Columbus organization. He played two games for the Blue Jackets but had a strong year at AHL Cleveland, 19 goals and 39 points in 46 regular season games, and five points in six playoff games.

“I had a good season last year, good playoffs, kind of came in confident,” said Gaunce (pronounced GAWNS). “I know how I had to play, and I think they do, as well; I’m just trying to show that.”

On the other end, Ohgren and Riley Heidt, a prospect who must return to juniors if he doesn’t make the team, have failed to make an early impression, although Ohgren had a goal and assist in an out-of-control second period against a prospect-heavy Jets team on Friday. Both played against the Jets, Hynes said, because they looked out of sorts in the Dallas game.

Khusnutdinov scored Friday, as well, but has been mostly inconspicuous. He’s 22, and Ohgren 20. Neither has played in the AHL, and if the coaching staff isn’t entirely confident in their readiness for the NHL, starting them there makes more sense for the Wild than putting them on the roster.

Ohgren will get another chance to make a good impression on Sunday against the Stars. So will Shore, Gaunce, Jones and former Gopher Travis Boyd, who played well in the team’s first preseason game.

Jesper Wallstedt will play his second preseason game, and Lauko his third.

“You come here trying to make an impression from the get go, so happy with the way things are going so far,” Lauko said Friday. “But, you know, it’s still preseason. Two preseason games. It just barely started. I just wanted to start strong, so it’s going well so far. But, like I said, it’s just the beginning. Nothing’s done.”

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