Twins drop sixth straight in rain-shortened game to Reds, fall below .500

On a season-long six-game losing streak, the Twins lost to the Cincinnati Reds and the rain on Wednesday.

As soon as the rain started falling with two outs in the bottom of the sixth inning, crew chief umpire David Rackley signaled for the Great American Ball Park grounds crew to pull the tarp. Bailey Ober held up his arms to ask why.

Ober, who hadn’t pitched well all month, finally settled into a groove. It was just too late to help the Twins in a rain-shortened, 4-2 loss. After Ober gave up runs in each of his first three innings, he retired eight of his last nine batters before Mother Nature halted him.

The Twins, who own a 36-37 record, dropped under .500 for the first time since they were 19-20 on May 9.

“I felt really good today,” Ober said. “Movement wise, everything just flowing in the right direction. I was just talking to myself, ‘Man, I just need a 1-2-3 inning, and then I’ll get going,’ because I felt really good. And it just didn’t happen until the fifth inning.”

The rain intensified quickly — a severe storm delayed the start of the game for two hours, seven minutes — and Ober slowly trotted off the mound. It may have been Ober’s last inning anyway, after throwing 88 pitches, but it was an abrupt ending for a guy searching for anything positive.

He allowed nine hits and four runs in 5 ⅔ innings with five strikeouts and zero walks.

Despite the results, pitching coach Pete Maki told Rocco Baldelli during the game, “Hey, this is what we’ve been wanting him to do.”

“Overall, I felt probably the best I’ve felt in a long time,” said Ober, who has yielded 20 hits and 16 runs over 17 ⅓ innings (8.31 ERA) in three starts this month. “Just got really unlucky today.”

Ober, granted a one-run lead before he took the mound, hasn’t shown much consistency since fellow starters Pablo López and Zebby Matthews landed on the injured list. In the first inning, Ober surrendered a two-run, two-out homer to Spencer Steer on a 92-mph fastball.

“The fastballs that were hit were in good spots where the guys usually don’t hit those if you look at their [scouting reports],” Ober said. “That’s why I’m not super beat up about it. I threw to good spots where they’re not supposed to hit and they just put the ball in play and hit it right where we weren’t. Just one of those days.”

BOXSCORE: Reds 4, Twins 2 (6)

It would be easier to accept an unlucky day if the Twins weren’t in such a rut. They’ve lost 10 of their last 12 games, and they have dropped four consecutive series.

Ober gave up three hits in the second inning, all on swings early in counts, including an RBI opposite-field single to Matt McLain on a ground ball that shot past first baseman Ty France.

Steer pulled a one-out double down the left-field line in the second inning and Will Benson followed two pitches later with an RBI single to right field on a down-the-middle fastball. This month has been a test of the Twins’ pitching depth, a bad time for Ober to take a few starts to find himself.

“Both his command and his stuff were clearly better,” Baldelli said. “They were improved from his last outing, and even his last couple of outings. This is the best he’s thrown the ball in a while.”

The Twins’ offense has scored more than three runs only once in its past six games. Facing Reds lefty Nick Lodolo, they totaled three hits, two walks and one hit batsman across six innings.

Byron Buxton homered on the first pitch following the 127-minute rain delay — the game started under some light rain — bashing a 93-mph fastball over the left-field fence. It was the second time Buxton homered on the game’s first pitch this season and his 11th career leadoff home run.

Buxton has homered in back-to-back games and three times in his last six games.

The Twins left two runners on base in the first inning, following a walk and a hit batter, when Lodolo struck out Harrison Bader. They didn’t have another runner reach second base until Willi Castro and Brooks Lee singled in the fourth inning, Lee extending his hitting streak to 17 games.

Castro scored on a groundout, but Lodolo retired his final eight batters.

The game was called about 45 minutes after the sixth-inning delay.

“It would have been a while before we were getting back out there, if we were getting out there at all,” Baldelli said. “You don’t want to acknowledge that sometimes because it still feels like it’s a very winnable game for us.”