Minneapolis – Bailey Ober has returned to form since he returned from the IL at the beginning of August. He’s thrown 22 innings over his four starts and pitched to a 4.09 ERA, after his ERA ballooned to 9.00 in June when he suffered from a left hip impingement.

Even though Ober has turned things around, he’s received little to no run support from the offense. The Minnesota Twins have been outscored 15-9 over Ober’s last four starts, and Ober has allowed 10 of those 15 runs.

In his latest start against the A’s on Wednesday, Ober was dealing with some back tightness before the game. It didn’t fatigue him too much, and he set a season high of 18 whiffs, tying his season high strikeout total of seven while averaging 89.3 MPH on his fastball. Considering how his night began, Ober was pleased with the results.

“I feel like the only thing I didn’t have was velo today,” Ober said postgame. “I felt like I had all the shapes, all the locations with each one of my pitches. The only thing I didn’t get a swing and miss on was my sinker, and I threw it two times, and I got a ground ball. It was still good. I felt like I had all the shapes, I was sequencing pretty well. The movement and location, probably one of the better outings this year.”

“Overall, it was a good outing for him,” said Twins manager Rocco Baldelli. “He got a lot of swing and miss, and he did it probably without his best raw stuff. He was able to go out there, and I had heard his back was a little tight warming up, kind of normal stuff guys do deal with and play with often in this game.”

Ober’s last two starts have caused team fatigue because they lost the starts in extra innings and went a combined 4-for-24 with runners in scoring position in those games. The Twins were also aggressive on the basepaths in both of those games, running themselves into needless outs that cost them the game.

During the extra innings loss to the Detroit Tigers on August 14, Alan Roden ran himself out at home on a bunt in the 10th inning at home plate that could have won the game. Instead, it cost them an out with their ghost runner. Then, in the fifth on Wednesday night, Brooks Lee second-guessed himself trying to advance to third on a passed ball and ran himself out as the third out in the inning.

The Twins have made a concerted effort to be more aggressive on the basepaths since the trade deadline. It’s helped them in some cases, but Thursday’s game was a case of their aggressiveness either costing them outs or coming up short when they needed to advance on the basepaths, like James Outman not advancing on an RBI single from Ryan Fitzgerald in the third.

“Yeah, Rocco spoke to us before the game,” said Fitzgerald. “He’s like, ‘We want to push the envelope. We want to be aggressive. We want to steal bags.’ I felt like that was a good opportunity early in the game to get runners in scoring position with nobody out.

“Yeah, there’s some intention there,” Baldelli said on the change in approach. “We want to run the bases more aggressively. You’re not going to begin that process unless you just simply do it one day. You just wake up and do it.”

Despite the poor results, the Twins will not abandon their new approach on the basepaths. They are shifting away from being a home-run-first team and need to find ways to win games in different ways. Their first approach to change is to move first to third over the basepaths.

“We’re going to have more guys with the green light going forward, and we’re going to be making a lot of decisions out there on the field using our vision and our awareness,” said Baldelli. “Yeah, it is part of our objective, and along with some of the extra bases we get, there could be some outs as well, but I’d rather play aggressive than passively.”

As for Ober, he’s feeling increasingly like his old self as the season winds down. The offense will eventually pick things up for him and get him back in the win column for the first time since May 3.

“Obviously, I’ve never been a guy that’s going to be lighting up the radar,” said Ober. “Whenever I’m able to sequence and mix pitch types and keep guys off balance and have the same release point with my hand on all those different pitches, that’s usually when I’m going to have a good night.

“That’s what I was battling through during that whole month of June was finding my release on all my other pitches. Today, it felt simple in that aspect, and I was able to go out and do a decent job.”