The Twins walked off the field Wednesday in Baltimore with their heads down as Cedric Mullins rounded the bases and his Orioles teammates crowded around home plate waiting for him.

The fourth straight loss for the Twins plunged their record to 6-11 on the season. For a team that had high hopes of winning the American League Central for the second straight season, it certainly is not the start they envisioned.

It’s still early, but they’ve already dug themselves into a hole, currently sitting 5 1/2 games behind Cleveland in the division.

“It feels quite hard. It feels like no matter what you try, nothing is smooth, nothing is working like you want,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. “And it’s tough to play the game with confidence and with an air of anything when it’s so difficult. Even when we do things well, we’re not getting the results.”

Here’s a look at how they got to this point:

Injuries

After a relatively healthy spring, the injury bug came for the Twins bullpen in the days before they packed up and left Fort Myers, Fla.

Jhoan Duran strained an oblique, Caleb Thielbar a hamstring and Justin Topa was shut down with patellar tendinitis, a blow to a bullpen that was expected to be a strength of this team. Just one of them — Thielbar — has returned thus far. The Twins also found out that starting pitcher Anthony DeSclafani would need surgery that would wipe out his entire season.

In the meantime, the position player group made it through spring training healthy, but once the season rolled around, it started to get dinged up, as well.

Royce Lewis looked every bit a star in his first two at-bats of the season, hitting a home run and a single. But while running the bases in the third inning on Opening Day, he suffered a quad injury that he’s not particularly close to returning from. In that same game, Max Kepler fouled a ball off his knee and exited early. Though he initially played through the pain, the Twins put him on the injured list, too.

And on their latest road trip, Carlos Correa, their most productive hitter at the time, strained his intercostal, taking him off the field as well.

“(We’re) missing our top three hitters in our lineup,” infielder Kyle Farmer said. “We’re in a tough stretch, but guys have got to step up.”

Offense

Correa said it multiple times early on: The Twins’ offense eventually figured it out last season after the all-star break, but they can’t afford to wait that long this time around.

“We don’t want to be here half a season trying to figure out when we know we’re capable of doing it a lot earlier,” Correa said earlier this month.

But save for a few hitters, Correa included, the beginning of the season has been a struggle and the team is collectively hitting .193, which is dead last in Major League Baseball entering Thursday’s games. They rank 27th in on-base percentage and slugging percentage, and 28th in OPS.

Simply put, it’s not good enough, and they’re well aware of it.

“Everyone right now has an adjustment to make,” hitting coach David Popkins said. “Some of that for some guys is just relaxing and believing in yourself and knowing you’ve done this before, you’ve done this many times throughout your career, and just takes — it’s very contagious when things get going.”

Kepler was hitting just .050 at the time he landed on the injured list. Left fielder Matt Wallner was striking out at such a high clip — 51.5 percent of his plate appearances — that the Twins demoted him to Triple-A for a physical and mental reset.

Byron Buxton (.193), Edouard Julien (.175) and Carlos Santana (.135) are among the starters off to slow starts.

“We have to get better, and we have to get better quickly, and that’s our goal, and we’ll continue to work until we do that,” Popkins said.

Pitching rotation

While the Twins’ rotation has been far from the biggest problem this season, the collective group has given up 56 runs, which was tied for third most in the majors as of Thursday morning. Their earned-run average as a group is 5.32, which is second-worst in the majors.

A big part of the reason why the Twins were able to remain competitive last season when the offense was off to a slow start was because of the rotation, led by Pablo López and Sonny Gray, who finished second in American League Cy Young voting.

But Gray walked in free agency, as did Kenta Maeda, and the Twins didn’t sink significant money into the rotation. The only move the Twins made to address the rotation from the outside was trading for DeSclafani, who needed flexor tendon surgery.

The Twins filled those holes with Chris Paddack, who returned to the rotation after spending most of last season rehabbing from Tommy John surgery, and Louie Varland. And while the Twins have high hopes for both pitchers, in the last series, the Twins saw Varland give up six runs (four earned) and Paddack allow nine. Those blowups ballooned each of their ERAs to 8.36.

“I’m letting the team down, and it’s a bad feeling,” Varland said after his last start.

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