In just 11 games things have gone from bad to worse for the Minnesota Twins. Tuesday night saw the team lose its third straight game, and sixth in a row to the Kansas City Royals, but an even bigger loss was suffered in the fifth inning.

Pablo Lopez needed to leave the game with what the team is calling hamstring tightness. Carlos Correa noticed something was off after Lopez delivered a walk to Jonathan India, which promoted a mound visit that ultimately saw Minnesota’s ace leave the game.

What happens next is up in the air, and only adds to growing anxiety and angst over an abysmal start to the season.

Rocco Baldelli gives a rather grim Pablo Lopez injury update after 2-1 loss to Royals

After the game Rocco spoke with the media and wasn’t exactly optimistic in his assessment of the situation.

“What Pablo has going on is a mild right hamstring strain. He’s going to get an MRI tomorrow to get it checked out,” Rocco said. “As of now, when I say mild we think it’s very mild. We’re going to keep him on course, we’re not going to have any change of plans of any kind right now. We’re just going to assess it and see what tomorrow shows us and then we’ll know more and then we’ll have more information and can actually make a decision at that point.”

That sounds like it leaves the door open for the possibility that Lopez won’t miss a ton of time, but the last part of Rocco’s statement sounds pretty grim.

Perhaps everything will work out alright and the MRI will come back clean enough that Lopez only misses his next start before returning to the mound, but that feels a little too optimistic given the vibes around the team right now.

He’s officially day-to-day until we hear otherwise, but we’ve seen these sorts of injuries turn ugly in a hurry before.

Last year the Twins saw injuries to Royce Lewis and Carlos Correa turn into mulitple months of missed time combined, and an season-ending injury to Joe Ryan punctuated what was an awful season of bad luck.

Not only are the Twins dealing with injuries to key players, but the ones who are on the field aren’t living up to expectations.

Defensively the team can’t stop making boneheaded errors that lead to runs, starting pitching has been a mess and as a result has placed immense pressure on a taxed bullpen.

On top of that, Minnesota’s trend of struggling on offense early in the season has continued which has put a cherry on top of a sundae that has melted and begun to drip into the gutter.

We’re just over ten games into the season so there’s time for things to turn around, but it’s hardly been the start to the year anyone wanted. It doesn’t seem like things are going to get much better any time soon, either.