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The Minnesota Twins were 17 games above .500 and cruising to their second consecutive playoff appearance on Aug. 17.
Until they weren't.
Minnesota is 12-26 in the last 38 games, in fourth place in the American League Central and officially eliminated from the playoffs. And it is going to take Twins manager Rocco Baldelli a long time to get over it.
"This will bother me forever," Baldelli said Saturday, per Bobby Nightengale of the Minnesota Star Tribune. "There will be no way around that. I will think about it a lot and I will use it to motivate myself in a lot of different ways going forward, because I never want to experience that again.