Last night the Minnesota Twins got their first taste of a game that truly resembled playoff baseball. The Milwaukee Brewers are certainly a playoff caliber team, maybe even National League Champion caliber, and showed it on a wet Memorial Day. The Twins struck first against the Brew Crew, scoring four 2-out runs in the 2nd on a Luis Arraez single and Byron Buxton Home Run. The Brewers would immediately respond by scoring 3 runs of their own on a double and 2 sacrifice flies. The Brewers would complete their comeback with a 2-run homer from Orlando Arcia, assumedly it was payback for DFA-ing his brother Oswaldo. Josh Hader would shut the door in the next 2 innings despite a threat by the Twins in the 9th.

This game felt very different from the ones the Twins have played recently where, even if they are having an off day, they score 7 runs and only allowed 1 or 2. This game truly felt like playoff baseball where both teams a fighting and clawing for every baserunner and every run.

The Twins had a chance to add runs in the 3rd when they had Miguel Sano on third and 1 out. However, the aggressive Willians Astudillo popped out to the 3rd baseman Mike Moustakas. Pop outs can be a by-product of being so aggressive, but I think most fans would take the trade-off of Astudillo making solid contact most of the time over striking out more often. The inning would end on a sliding catch by Milwaukee Left Fielder Ben Gamel off the bat of Luis Arraez. This Minnesota Twins team hasn't left too many runners in scoring position this year, leaving just 3.4/game good for 11th best in the league.

The Twins would put runners in scoring position two more times, in the 6th when a Buxton sacrifice bunt would move Arraez to 2nd with 1 out and in the 9th when a walk and single put Johnathon Schoop on 2nd and Ehire Adrianza on 1st, also with 1 out. In the 6th, the threat ended with back-to-back strikeouts, and the 9th inning would end with a short fly ball to center and a strikeout to end the game by Miguel Sano.

This was the first Twins game this season that truly felt like a playoff game. Both teams pitched well, and that made scoring opportunities few and far between. The Brewers threw their best out of the bullpen, Josh Hader, to finish the game like you would in the playoff, and the Twins almost scored off of him to tie it up.

This Twins team doesn't know much of playoff ball outside of their free agents, they've only have made the playoffs once in the last 8 years. It was good to get a feel for what the games are like and how you need to adjust to what the other team is doing. I felt they could have been a bit more patient and gauged pitches a bit better, and also could have resisted swinging for the fences so much, mostly Miguel Sano in his final at-bat. Of course it's easy for me to make those distinctions from my armchair where I'm not facing one of, if not the best, reliever in baseball.

The final thing that can be gleaned from this game was that the Twins played well and had a chance despite not having Nelson Cruz and Mitch Garver. Garver has been red hot this season, and Nelson Cruz has enough experience to be invaluable in games like the Twins played last night.