Were The Minnesota Twins' Last Three Games Really a 'Bittersweep'?

The headline on today's Pioneer Press sports section read Bittersweep: Twins Hold off another Late Seattle Mariners' Charge to Win 11-8.

Clever, I thought, and apt. The Twins swept the Mariners despite playing as poorly as a team can play and still win. In the series alone, they blew a 5-0 lead in the middle game, nearly squandered an 8-0 edge in game three, and were close to digging a deep hole in game one.

None of these games looked particularly well pitched. Joe Nathan and Francisco Liriano pitched out of key bases loaded situations to limit damage and Dennys Reyes had to face a few right-handed hitters to keep the Twins leads intact. Certainly, this was an UGLY series.

Or was it?

The bats looked great against a sub-par staff. 27 runs in a three game series should net a three game sweep nine times out of ten. Jason Kubel had a huge series, going 8-10, 5R, 6RBI, 2 2B, and an HR. Joe Mauer had key hits and extended his hitting streak to 10 games. In Sunday's 11-run blitz, every Twins' hitter had a hit, except for Delmon Young, who had been on a hot streak himself.

So it must be the pitching that made this all look so bad, right?

Liriano: 7IP, 2H, 2R, 0ER, 2BB, 5K

Baker: 5.1IP, 8H, 4ER, 2BB, 1K. Baker had one bad inning, but left with the lead. Jesse Crain couldn't hold the M's down and put the Twins in a hole.

Perkins: 6IP, 8H, 4ER, 0BB, 1K. Perkins gave up three home runs in the 6th, but like Baker, he left with the lead intact.

None of these outings looks fantastic, Liriano avoided the big inning that doomed the other two and certainly looked the best of the bunch, but none of the starters pitched the Twins out of the game. If Perkins and Baker could have made 1-2 more pitches, their lines would have looked dramatically better.

So, the blame must fall to the bullpen, non-Nathan class.

Game 1: 2IP, 4H, 1ER, 2K. Bass and Bonser both pitched well enough in short stints, and neither put the game at risk. Good outing.

Game 2: 3.2IP, 2H, 2ER, BB, 4K. Crain couldn't stop the bleeding that Baker had opened, and Breslow was unable to save Crain's mistakes. He did prevent his own runner, Ichiro, from scoring and was able to end the Mariner's rally. He went two more innings and combined with Dennys Reyes to hold the M's down while Brian Buscher and Joe Mauer won it for the Twins.

Game 3: 3IP, 8H, 4ER, 3BB, 3K. This is where it all fell apart. Bonser and Guerrier looked awful; they gave up all four of those runs in just 1.1 innings. Reyes gave up two hits in his 1/3 inning of work, and it all fell to Joe Nathan to do what he does best. Nathan pitched out of bases loaded jams twice, one of his own making, to end the game.

So, after a deeper look at the series, the Twins didn't actually play poorly, it just seemed that way. Outside of Jesse Crain, Boof Bonser, and Matt Guerrier, everyone else was pretty solid and it showed in that the Twins were able to overcome the poor play of those three and win every game.

The take away points from this series are these: First, the Twins need to trust Craig Breslow more. He pitched well, gave up just one hit (to Ichiro, who can blame him?), and has pitched some of the fewest innings in an overworked bullpen.

Second, the defense must really buckle down in the middle innings. If the starters can go 6-7 innings and take a load off of the pen, chances are good the bullpen will be able to hold up down the stretch.

The starters, almost to a man, suffer from Big Inning Trauma. If the defense can stop an inning from going awry before three runs are in, the starters can go that extra inning necessary to keep the bully fresh.

Finally, the bats will need to stay hot for the Twins to keep winning. The staff, as I've pointed out in the past, is exceptionally young. They are all approaching their innings maximums and the pressure isn't going away. The bullpen can't be counted on to bail out a bad start (they don't call him Gas Can Crain for no reason), so the offense must work to score early and often.

If this young staff knows that their hitters won't make them suffer the indignity of a 1-0 or 2-1 loss, they may be better able to pitch without the added concern of wondering if the bats will actually show up. The Twins lead in every one of these games and only trailed once. Even on Sunday, when the pen was its shakiest, the Twins led wire-to-wire and won by three runs.

The Twins will need to play better than they did in this series if they want to beat teams like the Angels and White Sox, but to say that this series was a "Bittersweep" focuses too much on the negative and not enough on all that went right over the last few days.