There’s no way to sugarcoat this one, as an absolute nightmare scenario is played out for the Minnesota Twins on Thursday in Baltimore.

Both Byron Buxton and Carlos Correa needed to leave the game after crashing into one another while chasing down a routine pop-fly.

The injuries happened in the third inning, with Correa exiting the game immedietly while Buxton stayed in a little longer before being removed.

Initially it appeared that Buxton took the worst of the collision, with his jaw striking the back shoulder of Correa. It looked bad enough in real time but the slow motion replay showed that Correa essentially served as a blocking dummy for a full-speed Buxton.

Nothing about it looked good, and it’s a disaster made even worse given how good things have been going.

For the second year in a row the Twins managed to turn a pretty pathetic start to the season around.

Minnesota began the year 0-4 and limped to a 5-12 start after the first few weeks of the season, something that put Rocco Baldelli on the hot seat and made the Twins a popular early pick to be sellers at the trade deadline.

Just like last year, when Minnesota ripped off a 12-game winning streak to course correct a rough start, the Twins found a groove and have refused to let it go. Minnesota is in the middle of an incredible 10-game winning streak that has the team at 23-20 and right back in the thick of the AL Central race.

That’s what makes losing both Buxton and Correa — and later Willi Castro — so much more devestating than it already would have been.

Minnesota seemed to have finally figured something out and didn’t even need a possibly toxic summer sausage this time around to do it.

Compounding anxiety and fear is that it’s not only two of the Twins superstars who are hurt but two of the team’s most fragile players. Buxton, specifically, is someone everyone is holding their breath about as he’s gotten off to one of the best starts we’ve seen from him in years and the last thing anyone needs is for a potential All-Star season to get derailed by injury.

Thus has been life with Buxton and it absolutely sucks to see.

We’ll see what ends up happening as far as the severity of the injuries and how long Buxton and Correa will be out, but this is quite the sudden end to the good vibes that had been rolling over the last 10-games.