Bleacher Report - Articles by Alex Brown

Cuddy and Kubel Boost Minnesota Twins Over Cleveland Indians 6-3

Alex Brown — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 01:08:49 -0400

You can count the rest of the season. You can count it in the seven games remaining against the Tigers, or against teams that ought to be (here’s hoping) pushovers. You can count the games remaining in the Metrodome itself, and the number is so small that this afternoon the TV crew was given a chance to have a last little pickup game on soon-to-be rolled up carpet.

But most of all, you can count the season in opportunities. We’re in that limbo now when it’s mathematically possible to win the division, but the likelihood dims each day. Yes, there are enough games left to do it in, but where will the spark come from to light up those chances?

Having failed to use the Oakland A’s as a punching bag, the Twins opened a series against the Indians at the Dome tonight. Would they oblige as patsies and let us take a few steps toward the Tigers

They started lefty Jeremy Sowers, the pitcher who’d caused the Twins so much trouble in his last outing against them. And tonight he went seven shimmering innings, confining the Twins to a handful of little hits.

Sowers doesn’t mow batters down with strikeouts and doesn’t throw much above 90 mph, but he garners groundouts with the best of them. He tied Denard Span up in knots, and seemed to trick every other hitter into chopping the ball up the middle for an easy out.

Everyone but Joe Mauer, that is. Mauer continued his march toward the batting title by going 3 for 3 tonight, all singles. But no following batter was able to nudge him as far as third, and the Twins were blanked for seven innings.

Carl Pavano made few mistakes on the mound for the Twins, but two bad pitches were enough. He walked rookie catcher Lou Marson and then served up a home run ball to Trevor Crowe. Crowe, batting ninth, will remember the moment—it was his first big league dinger.

One inning later, Pavano allowed a solo homer to Shin-Soo Choo, and the Indians were up 3-0 with an apparently impregnable Sowers on the mound.

And in fact, the secret of winning this game was getting past Sowers to the bullpen. The normally hard as nails Tony Sipp faced Orlando Cabrera, who hit a bat-splintering chopper to short. Asdrubal Cabrera mishandled the ball, and on that error the eighth inning began.

Facing Mauer, who had placed his singles neatly to left, center, and right, Sipp may have been concerned that the necklace was missing the home run jewel. He walked Mauer, and the Indians trotted out righty Chris Perez to face Michael Cuddyer.

Here the game, and the season, balance for a moment. If Cabrera hadn’t made that error, and if Sipp hadn’t flinched against Mauer, the three-run lead might well have stood up. There weren’t a lot of fans on a Monday in the Metrodome to spur the team, but this was the time when the players themselves would have to pluck desire from the ashes. At this balancing point, it could have gone either way.

Cuddyer did the magical thing. There isn’t anything more magical than parking the ball in the seats to tie a game that had looked hopeless for two hours. With a brisk swing, Cuddy lifted us all as high as the ball he crushed to center.

A tie still requires a lot of tending to convert into a win. Perez started cleaning up his mess by getting an out, then faced Delmon Young.

It was Young’s birthday, and he already had the basis of a celebration by scratching out one of the six hits Sowers permitted. Perez tried to shake off the massive homer he’d allowed, but couldn’t. Young nicked his second single.

Matt Tolbert followed with a blooper hit that floated out of range in shallow left, and Young had the presence of mind to motor all the way to third base.

Jason Kubel came up, pinch hitting for Carlos Gomez. Good choice, Mr Gardenhire. Kubel was out of the starting lineup with a sore neck, but he limbered up enough to get the count to 2-2. Perez, showing real strain, unleashed a wild pitch that allowed Young to scoot home with the go-ahead run.

Oh, the ignominy. But it got worse for poor Perez. A few pitches later, Kubel found the fastball he was looking for and punched it into the plastic seats in right. 6-3 Twins, a comeback built from swings of pure joy.

There are some ways of showing that joy. Cuddy, for example, has been raising the stakes on his post-homer high fives all season. He’s taken to smacking the welcoming committee in the dugout so hard that his teammates must wince in pain. Tonight was no exception—Gardy yelped “Ow!”

Kubel isn’t as punishing in his happiness. He tends to beam like a cherub, and I can’t quite see what’s keeping his teammates from rubbing his buzz cut head after he tosses his batting helmet on the rack. There was a lot of exuberance in that eighth inning.

Joe Nathan is still dead set on showing a high degree of difficulty of his saves. These isn’t skating, Joe! You don’t have to add that triple axle! In any case, after two smooth outs he permitted Indians to occupy first and second before coaxing a grounder to end the game.

Meanwhile, the Tigers were behind the Blue Jays, but overcame a three-run deficit in the ninth inning to go on and win the game. The Twins managed to stay 5-1/2 games back—not gaining ground, but not losing any either. That Tigers win looked every bit as magical as the treat we had from Cuddy and Kubel. How can we catch those Tags?

On the heels of this happy win came the news that Justin Morneau will be out for the rest of the season. His dwindling batting average is now explained: he has a stress fracture in his back that will require rest. It’ll heal, but it will do so on its on, in its own sweet time.

A postseason push with Morneau feels nearly impossible. In fact, the recent drop in the standings ties in all too neatly with Morneau’s hitting woes. With him and Crede lost, it’s tough to strike fear in any playoff team’s heart.

Morneau’s season is now frozen with 30 homers and 100 RBI. I remember when those nice numbers rolled over his odometer last Wednesday. I had thought he might have fixed something and set himself back on the hitting path. But this is where he will leave off, and pick up next year.

His average had been plunging, and to have it come to rest at .274 seems unfair. He had something like 7 hits in his last 70 at-bats, and that’ll ruin any average. But his season was far better than these last numbers betray.

He kept the team going for the entire month of April when Mauer was out, and then, when the two of them went marching shoulder to shoulder, it looked like the Twins could be champs of the central.

Technically, I am at pains to observe, this is still so. Tonight’s win shows a bit of the heat and light we must see. But the big concern right now is which force is stronger, the loss of Morneau or the beauty of this come from behind rally?

It was a wonderful night, outcome included. Span made an elegant sliding catch and a beautiful bullet of a throw to third. Nick Punto hustled himself a hit by diving across first base, and hustled himself a stolen base in the same dusty manner. Young collected two hits on his 24th birthday.

Cuddyer had a milestone too, for the homer tonight was the 100th of his career. If you value your hands, don’t want to high five him, but you do want to celebrate.

This story originally appeared on http://alexbaseball.wordpress.com/

Cleveland Indians' Defense Run Down Minnesota Twins and Their Hopes

Alex Brown — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 01:09:28 -0400

To brew up a classic pitcher’s duel, you need two hurlers at the top of their game, a reasonably generous umpire, and alert fielders.

Only the fielders did their part on Sunday afternoon’s game between the Twins and the Indians, but the game stayed hitless until the fourth, and scoreless until the fifth.

And no floodgates opened, even then. The Twins acquired one run, and scored first, and then the Indians tied it in the sixth and scored two more in the seventh to win 3-1.

David Huff started for Cleveland, and through seven innings had the distinction of throwing only slightly more strikes than balls while holding the Twins to two measly hits.

The first of them was a double by Nick Punto that scooted obediently just fair of the first base bag, then dribbled up the line, allowing the hustling Punto to make second. Denard Span followed with an RBI single to center to put the Twins up 1-0.

The line score makes Huff look like a colossus, but the actual pitching component of his game was a good deal less impressive than the single earned run and two hits. Huff was never overpowering and in addition to the four walks he allowed, Twins hitters could have coaxed a few more with some effort, not to mention some hits.

All credit to David Huff, but it looked like the Twins had a collective batting lapse today. No one made good contact, it’s that simple, and when an entire lineup hits that anemically, you assume the pitcher is the reason why.

But pitch by pitch, Huff was in the low 90s/high 80s with so-so control and no special zip or movement on his pitches.

I watched the game trying to look past the smoke and mirrors. Why was Huff baffling us? Well, sometimes a baseball game just bends one team’s way, and there may be no explaining it.

Meanwhile, Nick Blackburn was pitching with much better control and economy, and for the first five innings dispatched the Indians easily.

The home plate umpire was kind to neither pitcher. Pitches on the corners, particularly the inside to right handed hitters, weren’t getting called strikes no matter how picture perfect they looked in replay. Huff and Blackburn each managed a few strikeouts, but they felt like the results of lengthy petitions to the governor.

Blackburn was sharp, but in the sixth, Michael Brantley led off with a broken bat single. The ball left the bat weakly, but in a cascade of splinters that made its trajectory hard to read, and now the Twins’ 1-run lead looked tenuous. Blackburn had allowed only two prior hits, and was in serene control, but innings can break apart at the slightest touch.

Asdrubal Cabrera sacrificed Brantley over to second, and, as always, it was even odds that the gamble would pay off. The Indians gave up an out to a pitcher who seeks out double plays. But they also advanced their runner in the late innings while fighting a 1-run deficit.

Now we get a chance to see if Blackburn can stay tough. Because he pitches to contact, it takes little to pry a hit out of him. He has to stay true to his game and let hitters peck away, while trying to control what, exactly, they can do with the ball.

He faces Shin-Soo Choo, a lefty, and strikes him out. Blackburn still looks the master of the game, even if the umpire is allowing nearly nothing inside.

This sets the stage for the pressure of a two-out hit. The verdict on the sac grounder was still out: a single ties the game, but a ball any fielder can reach quickly ends the inning.

Jhonny Peralta, a good but not great contact hitter, raps a ground ball up the middle to score the runner. Sometimes baseball is that simple, and that sad.

Blackburn may be close to the unraveling point, where I’ve seen him flounder before. Travis Hafner whom he’s foiled all afternoon, now smacks a neat, sharp line drive to right center to put men on first and third.

Matt LaPorta, suffering from a hitting slump, can break the tie if he can defeat his hitting demons. Blackburn’s 89th pitch is a bloop to shallow center. Carlos Gomez sprints to run it down, and the inning is over. Tie game, preserved by Blackburn. Though he gave up a crucial run, he stayed steely to finish the inning and keep the Twins within reach.

The seventh inning will prove a worse test of fire. Luis Valbuena leads off with a single, and Andy Marte follows with a sacrifice to nudge him on to second. So far, it’s a carbon copy of last inning.

With two outs, Brantley is up again, and this rookie has been proving himself during his late season call-up. He hits a clutch single to right and what he does next is either a blunder or a stroke of genius. He starts running past first, and either he’s trying to draw a throw to improve Valbuena’s chances to cross the plate or he’s over-reached.

But the Twins allow the worst to happen. The run has long ago scored and Brantley’s in a rundown between Michael Cuddyer at first and Nick Punto at second. Cuddy has the ball and he knows Brantley’s fast so he’s got the ball in his bare hand, ready to make the throw to Punto.

But Brantley’s very fast, and the distance keep collapsing. Cuddyer now sees his only chance is hurling himself onto Brantley to apply the tag. And for a moment, it looks like he’s gotten the third out.

It would certainly look that way to the second base umpire, but for those of us watching from TV’s high home camera, the ball Cuddyer has dropped is all too awfully evident on the ground. It fell from his grasp as he dove trying to tag Brantley, and there’s no disguising it loose in the dirt once Cuddy stands up. Brantley is safe, and on second at that.

Give Brantley credit for a fighting as fiercely through a rundown as any eager rookie can. And give the Twins a demerit for blowing the out.

Almost every rundown I’ve seen is a variation on the walls closing in, with things looking progressively worse for the runner, who’s eventually overcome in what’s nearly a videogame snuff-out. But today I was reminded of how rapidly this play moves, and how unpredictable the baserunner can be.

It’s two against one, sure, and the fielders have even more men backing them up, but the lone runner has the advantage of just plain making them get a little crazy out there.

Cuddyer held the ball too long, counting too much on the pure majesty of brandishing the thing against a helpless runner. But Brantley wasn’t cowed, and by extending the time of the play, he shortened the distance to the point Cuddyer flinched.

And there would be consequences. Jose Mijares is brought in to relieve Blackburn, and to face Cabrera. The Indians seem comfortable collecting two-out hits, for Cabrera knocks in the runner with a double.

It’s 3-1 Indians, and there it stays as the Twins fall to Tony Sipp in the eighth and Kerry Wood in the ninth. The Indians take the series two games to one, and suddenly the Twins’ second wind seems to have blown itself out.

We’re in that most familiar territory again—.500, with 68 wins and 68 losses. Hovering at this balancing point all season long is no longer a way of staying in contention. It’s a way of fading away.

Minnesota Twins Turning It On with 4-1 Walkoff Win Over Chicago White Sox

Alex Brown — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 01:13:12 -0400

I am cheered by the Twins. Which is, after all, the point. But we do tend to over complicate our sports—every failure, and even every success, generates oceans of criticism.

But tonight, I am cheered by the Twins. Though they still hover near .500, they’ve actually made a radical turnaround. They were 4-9 in the first half of August, but 10-5 in the last two weeks. It’s a gruesome way to go 14-14, with a losing spell that seemed never to end and a winning phase that could do no more than counterbalance the losses.

But that winning arc isn’t over. The Twins might be climbing somewhere.

In the last two weeks, they swept Kansas City and won series against Baltimore and Texas. They started a three-game series with Chicago last night and won by using the full complement of baseball aptitudes.

There was good pitching from Nick Blackburn, solid relief pitching, and a tidy save by Joe Nathan. A little power hitting, plus your basic base hits. And solid fielding throughout the game, much in contrast to some blunders by the White Sox.

Tonight, Jeff Manship made his first major league start, and it was a pleasant surprise. Ron Gardenhire has been patching a leaking pitching boat all season, with injuries and ineffectiveness creating constant turmoil in the rotation. Manship went five solid innings and allowed one run and four hits.

But what I’m really cheering about is the pattern of the game. It was scoreless through four, and neither team seemed to have the upper hand.

The White Sox scored first, but the Twins had a ready reply in the bottom of the same inning. Alexi Ramirez homered off Manship in the fifth, and then Michael Cuddyer duplicated the feat against Sox starter John Danks. If you can break my pitcher’s shutout, I can break yours.

The Twins added another run in the sixth, and a third in the seventh, on Cuddyer’s second homer of the evening. A 3-1 lead is a wobbly little thing, but with only six outs to go and Nathan in the bullpen, it didn’t seem too frail to get us home safe.

The test of the team is what it does when discouragements arise. In fact, I think that’s why we watch sports in the first place, simply to see a template for facing adversity. Tonight, we got our object lesson in the eighth inning.

Jose Mijares, normally a very effective bridge to Nathan, has lately had a knack for settling down very slowly when he starts an inning. As in, walking the first man he faces. It’s a jam I’ve watched him get out of many times, but tonight, to protect our second place position in the division against the Sox, Gardy pulled Mijares after the four-pitch walk to Scott Podsednik.

Matt Guerrier was brought in to face Gordon Beckham. Guerrier wasn’t going to get any time to settle down either, for Beckham sent the first pitch he saw rocketing over the leftfield wall.

All air seemed to leave the Metrodome. It may have been an oddity of the position of microphones, but I kept hearing the low hum of the ventilation system, suddenly louder, and sadder, than the fans. The game was tied, and there were no outs.

The rest of the inning had some ugly moments, though they won’t amount to anything in the box score. Guerrier got his three outs, but not before throwing two wild pitches. Joe Mauer failed to scoop up one of them, and AJ Pierzynski beat his throw to first after swinging at strike three. Briefly, the Twins looked shaken, and unraveled.

The Metrodome’s horrid ventilators were heaving the air in and out while the Twins struggled to retire the White Sox. But against the last batter, when Guerrier had gotten two strikes on Carlos Quentin, I heard cheers start up. The fans felt like rallying, and made their hopes known. And indeed, it was strike three to end the inning,

The Twins couldn’t solve the problem in their half of the eighth, but they put together a thoroughly exciting ninth inning. Jason Kubel led off with a single against reliever Matt Thornton. Gardy, looking for every advantage, installed Nick Punto to do the remaining running for Kubel.

Ozzie Guillen wasn’t about to be out-managed by Gardenhire if he could help it. He headed to the mound to pull Thornton, and brought in Tony A. Pena, a reliever I’d never seen before.

With none out, Cuddyer is up and no one is surprised to see he doesn’t have a third homer in him. He flied out. Now Brendan Harris is up. I may be overgenerous about him, but I know I’ve seen him collect a bigger than average share of small clutch hits.

And tonight is no exception. He singles, and Punto stands at third, aching to reach home and win the game.

A sacrifice fly will do it now, but Carlos Gomez cannot put together the swing for it. He strikes out, and the weight of the tie starts to settle heavily on everyone in the stadium.

Gardy has one last out, and one last plan. He wants a pinch hitter for Alexi Casilla, and calls on Jose Morales. Morales has only recently been called back up. He’s the backup catcher to the backup catcher, but has shown quite a penchant for pinch hitting. It’s time to try him again.

Morales nailed the second pitch, hitting a hard liner to center. Punto’s home and the Twins win.

It’s cheering, in every respect. The team mobs Morales and exults. We’re beating our closest pursuer, and we’re doing it despite the obstacles that arise. The team is drawing on the young, the inexperienced, and the largely overlooked, but getting solid work from them.

And somehow, there’s a belief that those 3-1/2 games between us and the Tigers...well, that’s not Everest, now is it?

Originally published on 162 Reasons http://alexbaseball.wordpress.com/

Minnesota Twins Show Postseason Spark in Comeback Win Over Texas Rangers

Alex Brown — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 18:33:08 -0400

The winner of Sunday’s final game in the series between the Twins and the Rangers will consider it consolation for a tough loss, for both teams have had one of those. The Twins scraped a victory on Friday, 3-2, while the Rangers won 3-0 yesterday.

So the game today must really decide the series. And it’s not so much which of these two teams has the better rotation, bullpen, or batting order. No, the real question is which one is ready to contend for postseason play.

The Rangers are trying to catch the Red Sox for the AL wild card. At 2-1/2 games back as of today, the dream is very real. They must also shake off the pesky Rays, two games behind them but perhaps looking winded—they just gave up Scott Kazmir to the Angels at the trading deadline, which looks like a surrender flag to me.

The Twins have no real hope of the wild card, but the Central division crown is within reach, thanks, largely to Detroit’s failure to fortify themselves in the top spot. The Twins have edged ahead of the White Sox for second place, but that’s still a full 4-1/2 games back.

Both the Twins and the Rangers have been showing off their pitching in this series, including the Twins’ newly-appointed bullpen. Considering the collective hitting prowess of these two teams, not to mention the presence of baseball’s current batting champ, hits and runs have been eerily scarce.

On Sunday, Scott Baker started for the Twins, and had two sharp innings, only to fall into his typical pit in the third inning.

The recipe for trouble with Baker is: lots of pitches, including a steady, dreary rain of foul balls, plus two or three hits strung together for a run. It never looks like bad pitching until it’s over.

Baker was only touched for one run this time, on an RBI single from Elvis Andrus following a double from Ivan Rodriguez.

If you ever want to remind yourself how thin the line between losing and winning can be, dissect a Scott Baker inning. Rodriguez’s hit came on a pretty good pitch, and though I didn’t see what Andrus hit, I doubt it was a howler of a mistake. Yet the Rangers were on the scoreboard first.

Baker bounced back with a quick 1-2-3 fourth inning, while the Twins collected isolated hits and walks for three innings, but couldn’t push anyone all the way around the merry-go-round.

In the bottom of the fourth, the Twins punch through the tissue paper between success and failure. They start the inning with a Justin Morneau double followed by a beefy Jason Kubel home run to right. Lead reversed on a single pitch, and the Twins were up 2-1.

Kevin Millwood, starting for the Rangers, has the nutty career distinction of never having beaten Minnesota. When Kubel rapped that homer, he may have realized he wasn’t going to complete that quest in the Metrodome itself. He will have to take the project on to Target Field next year.

Before the inning ended, Mike Redmond, typically the Twins Sunday catcher, hit a sharp line drive that rattled up to the base of the wall, giving the slow-footed Redmond more than enough time to collect a triple.

He was exulting on third base while the cameras caught a dancing Carlos Gomez and a laughing Ron Gardenhire in a dugout that was celebrating Redmond’s three-bagger.

No, Redmond never scored and the triple isn’t significant, but the little sense of joy I saw there reminded me that playoff teams operate on fun as well as skill. The Twins were enjoying themselves today, close game or not.

Baker followed with a one-two-three fifth and an easy sixth to show the Rangers he can confine his woes to single innings, and single runs.

However, he had one more bad inning, and again, it was barely bad but it was bad enough to make a difference. A two-run homer from Nelson Cruz put the Rangers back on top, 3-2.

Time for another test of the potentially contending team. The Rangers passed theirs by snatching back the lead, and the Twins had a golden chance in the seventh, against reliever Jason Grilli. With one out, Denard Span doubled and Alexi Casilla followed with a hard-earned walk. That brings Joe Mauer to the plate.

Screenwriters must flinch when trying to write the story of a baseball game. I mean, how realistic is it to put your star player in the batter’s box with the game on the line? But it’s precisely what we have this afternoon, even if Mauer’s bat doesn’t have a lightning scar on it.

You could write us into this spot, but reality intrudes. Mauer’s arcing hit to center was gathered up by Marlon Byrd, who hustled hard to scoop it. Denard Span left second, all too certain of a hit, and became the final out by running as if there were already two outs. Opportunity lost.

Morneau led off the eighth with a walk against new reliever CJ Wilson. Kubel followed with a single, and Gardenhire sent Gomez in to run for the slow, stocky Kubel.

With no outs and two on and the game likely on the line, the Twins got another test of whether they want to contend. CJ Wilson struck out Michael Cuddyer to re-balance the inning in the Rangers’ favor. But they weren’t out of the woods yet.

Brendan Harris hit a grounder that shot through the infield, allowing Morneau to score the tying run. Cruz’ throw from the outfield went wide of the plate and allowed Gomez to advance to third and Harris to second.

On an infield chopper to Hank Blalock at first, Gomez took off for home. It was gutsy, but he had a good lead and beat the slightly offline throw. Now up 4-3, the Twins still have only one out and men on first and third.

Little Nicky Punto, master of the squeeze bunt, brought in Harris and was safe at first. Harris crossed home before Rodriguez could get a handle on the ball, and then Rodriguez’s throw to first was well behind the speedy Punto.

With two little infield hits—no power, only strategy—the Twins climb up 5-3. They used the talent they had and made it work. Sometimes being a contending team means admitting your shortcomings and making a virtue of them.

Joe Nathan always seems to find new ways to add excitement to the closer’s job. Here to preserve a two-run lead, he walked Hank Blaclock after starting him 0-2.

Nathan hunts around in his repertoire to find a double play ball to pitch to Cruz. He almost found it, too, but Cruz hit a lucky liner to left to put men on first and second. The ball poked through the left side of the infield, and suddenly Nathan looked terribly vulnerable.

Rodriguez took a swinging strike, then knocked the next pitch lazily straight to Nathan. This is the double play, no doubt about it. But Nathan seems to overplay it, rebalancing his feet and throwing flat and slightly wide to second. The ball bounced past the infielder and everyone was safe.

Bases loaded. Baseball never requires much math, and we’ve been answering one question all inning: where’s the tying run? At the plate, on first, on second. Far too close for comfort.

Who knows how Nathan survives these dramas. His shakes his head and exhales mightily, and I end up mimicking him from the couch. What other gesture is possible while watching someone move through a minefield?

Now Nathan settles down to collect his three necessary outs: strike out, fly out, groundout. Twins win.

Nothing I saw this weekend counts the Rangers out on their journey toward the postseason. But the main thing I saw was a sense of resolve, and a sense of fun, on the part of the Twins.

Yes, contending rhymes with pretending, making for some pretty catchy and sometimes superficial classifications. I know as well as anyone that the Twins have an extremely questionable starting rotation. And I know it’s important to start distancing yourself from your team about now, lest they break your heart.

But the Twins have more than simple possibility on their side. They have Mike Redmond, playing once a week, hustling out that happy triple. That’s contending.

Minnesota Twins Creep into AL Central Second Place, Beat Texas Rangers 3-2

Alex Brown — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 01:34:05 -0400

The Twins beat the Rangers tonight. The game had two simple themes: the Twins scored three quick runs in the first inning and then fell stone silent at the hands of the Ranger pitchers, and Brian Duensing pitched very well to silence Texas.

There were three good scares in the game, to match the three runs the Twins managed. Duensing had some trouble in the sixth, and finally gave up a run. Add that blemish to his one walk and three hits and you have an idea of how sharp he was for seven innings.

But the stats don’t paint the full picture. That walk? It was issued to the first batter of the game, and might be classified as something Duensing had to get out of his system to settle down into the game.

The free pass was counterbalanced by eight strikeouts, a career high for the young pitcher. Duensing isn’t a strikeout pitcher, by either temperament or talent. But he had something tonight that foiled the Texas hitters.

He allowed his first hit in the fourth, and then doled out two in the sixth. The Rangers turned those plus a fielder’s choice into a run. That’s all the scoring Duensing allowed.

But scare number two came in the eighth, with Matt Guerrier on in relief. Chris Davis led off with a single, and Guerrier looked pressured the entire inning. Elvis Andrus grounded into what would become only half a double play. Davis was cut down, but Andrus made himself comfortable on first.

He didn’t want to linger long, though. The Rangers had already stolen a base against Joe Mauer, with Ian Kinsler swiping second in the first inning. But Andrus’ attempt was foiled on a strong throw from Mauer, and the Rangers counterattack started to wilt

Guerrier still courted danger. Kinsler got his second hit of the game and managed to steal second yet again. But with two outs, a runner on second isn’t quite so scary. Michael Young grounded out and Guerrier headed back to the dugout after narrowly preserving the 3-1 lead.

The third scare was the scariest, in true horror movie style. Joe Nathan checked off his first two outs swiftly. But number three was an entire baseball game in itself.

Ivan Rodriguez hit a fierce liner to right that bounced off the side of the baggie for a ground rule double.

Skinny David Murphy was up next, and he sent Nathan’s first pitch deep to right, landing about a foot or so below the top of the baggie. It bounced back to the field to become a mere double, but the vivid possibility of a game-tying home run sucked all the air out of the Metrodome.

Nathan, off course, tried to puff all the air back in with his trademark big-cheek exhalations. He puffed and puffed to settle himself down after giving up a run. The runner behind him on second must have felt like a massive weight.

Nathan used all his facial tricks and tics, but he walked his next batter, Hank Blalock in for a spot of pinch hitting.

The game was getting easy to tie, and even easy to win now. But Chris Davis was called out on strikes to give the Twins a victory. I’ve chosen those words carefully, because the umpire’s call on that last 3-2 pitch was, shall we say, debatable.

I don’t doubt that Nathan would have gotten there eventually, but that pitch looked more like the bases were going to be loaded than high fives with the catcher.

Now, even the Rangers might not kick too hard, as the strike zone was a tad elastic all night. But the game was balancing pretty precariously on that pitch, and you’d prefer the umpire got it right.

Early in the game, home plate umpire Mike Estabrook seemed to be favoring Rangers starter Tommy Hunter by expanding the strike zone for him, even as he appeared to contract it unduly for Duensing.

One assumes most little vagaries in sports do eventually even out, but Nathan seemed quite the beneficiary tonight.

But we’ll take it, won’t we? The Twins have now scratched themselves up into second place in the division, 4-1/2 behind mighty Detroit. The White Sox lost today, but they are merely a half game behind.

No one would say Detroit was walking away with the Central, but that the Twins are in contention is due more to the embarrassing weakness in the division than their current .500 record. It’s simple: you really shouldn’t be collecting a lot of prizes with a .500 record, and the Twins have never exceeded that mark by much, or for long, all season.

The Rangers are poised to pose a lot of problems in the next two games this weekend. They’re 2-1/2 games behind Boston in the wild card chase, and this is looking like an especially golden season for them.

They’ve groomed and buffed several hot young starting pitchers, and have some absolute flamethrowers in the bullpen. Add that to their standard hitting prowess, and Texas has a story to tell.

Tonight it was three scares and you’re out. Tomorrow the Rangers may do more than threaten. This series could help determine if the Twins are truly ready to contend.

They have no big mathematical obstacles, and with all due respect to the Tigers, their rival is within reach. The question is whether the Twins can sustain a winning drive with pitching that seems to come and go. Tonight Duensing proved he’s ready to press forward. It could be a rallying cry.

Twins-Orioles: Minnesota Beats Baltimore with Walk-Off Hit from Delmon Young

Alex Brown — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 01:14:25 -0400

Armando Gabino had his first major league start for the Twins tonight, facing Brian Matusz, who has a mere five games under his belt. The raw beauty of something done for the first time made me hope Gabino would have a fairytale debut.

Because a win would come in handy here. The Twins have reeled off four straight victories, the third time they’ve managed this high watermark this season.

But five? Five in a row? That might really mean that the little signs we’ve been seeing are true portents.

Signs like Alexi Casilla nudging his batting average steadily upward, even as he’s constructing a highlight reel of great catches at second base. And Delmon Young starting to hit consistently, even if not deep.

Signs like Joe Mauer regaining that exciting power stroke of late, using some homers in his serious quest of the AL batting crown.

Signs like the whole lineup stringing together hits, and cashing them in for wins. The bullpen hanging tough and shouldering the load of a lot of innings. The starting pitchers having some good games, intermittent though they be.

It’s too soon to call these patterns, but it’s never too soon to hope for the winning streak that signals a real run at the division crown. The Twins don’t have to be too gaudy about it. We don’t need an odds-defying winning streak; we just need to chip along and get the wins to outweigh the losses.

A win tonight will tie the Twins with the White Sox for second place in the division standings, after their loss to Boston. Should Detroit lose to the Angels, the Twins and White Sox would be three games back.

So a win would mean something to the team, but probably even more to young Mr. Gabino. He makes his way through the first inning with but a walk to blemish his brief record. But in the second, some nasty firsts accumulate.

His first hit allowed, to Matt Wieters, the switch-hitting catcher. And then, too quickly, three more hits to push three runs across the plate.

Gabino even has time for his first error. He let a runner advance on a throwing error, and later blundered a bit in the field by failing to get to first quickly enough to accept a throw. It was not going to be fairytale night.

Gabino had three separate mound visits from pitching coach Rick Anderson, catcher Mauer, and second baseman Casilla. All are hoping to settle him down and come up with the magic words that reconnects Gabino with the sharp sinking action his fastball, we hear tell, had in the minors.

Alas, no. The chats don’t help, and the sometimes punchless Orioles lineup doesn’t help. In the third, Gabino has the classic major league trial—he loads the bases with a double and two walks.

Ron Gardenhire pulls him, and chapter one in his big league education is complete. Phil Humber has his share of trouble with the baserunners he inherits. He walks the first batter to hand the Orioles another run, but ends the inning with a strikeout.

The Twins had a sloppy game offensively as well. They couldn’t scratch a single run after loading the bases in the first, and squandered opportunities throughout the night.

They were playing from behind all through the game, but kept showing sparks. Denard Span hit a happy-making triple in the second to score two runs, and Morneau proved he’s shaken the inner ear infection by launching a solo homer.

Baltimore led 6-3 when the Twins came up for their half of the sixth. This is their magic inning, remember, when the runs just tumble out.

Young led off with a single, his third hit of the night. Carlos Gomez followed with a base hit of his own.

Pause to savor this pattern: consecutive hits from the bottom third of the batting order. If the Twins can do this once or twice a game, they can hoist themselves above .500.

And tonight they keep the momentum going, with Casilla parking a double in the deep recesses of right field, scoring one. Brian Bass, the Orioles reliever, is perhaps the key ingredient in this pleasant stew. Matusz has finished his five innings and left with a three-run lead, but Bass will fail to collect a single out.

Bass walks in a run, and when the inning is over the Twins have tied the game.

Jesse Crain and Jose Mijares pitch with grit to keep the Orioles from messing with that tie. But the Twins can’t make use of a lead-off walk in the seventh, and then are silenced completely in the eighth by imposing reliever Kam Mickolio, who throws with the special fury of a man nearly as tall as Randy Johnson.

A tie is like a protective amulet for the home team, but eventually you have to step beyond the armor to try to win. In the bottom of the ninth, we have Mauer, Morneau, and Michael Cuddyer, the best part of the batting order. Let it be now.

But Mauer and Morneau both ground out, victims of Mickolio’s big pitches. Its’ down to Cuddyer to prolong this inning, and he is barely safe on a infield single.

Jason Kubel didn’t start tonight against the left-handed Matusz, but now he’s tapped for pinch hit duty. He has a long, arduous at bat, and extracts a walk from Mickolio, moving Cuddy to second. Young is up, on a 3-for-4 night.

Let’s be realistic: Kubel, Cuddyer, Morneau, and Mauer couldn’t get it done. There are two outs. This pitcher can throw strikes.

There’s always another inning coming with this tie in place. You really think Young can get four hits in a game?

Well, yes he can and this one is a walk-off. Cuddyer whips around from second to home on a single that trickles into right, and soon Young is mobbed at first base as the Twins gain their fifth consecutive win.

Cuddyer’s face is one broad grin, and the Twins seem to be up to something. At last.

Minnesota Twins Sweep Kansas City Royals with Big Seventh Inning

Alex Brown — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 00:40:34 -0400

The Twins and Royals played two games of baseball today, and I’m not referring to a doubleheader. Through the first six innings, the game was about how far you could stretch a single run. And then it became a classic clobbering, with the Twins raining down hits to sweep the series and inch up to two games below .500.

Carl Pavano started for the Twins, and he had a textbook day, almost escaping with a shutout. He pitched seven innings and allowed only two runs, one in the sixth that tied the game, and one in the seventh that meant nearly nothing.

Steering the team through five and two-thirds innings with a 1-0 lead, he was careful without cringing. He challenged the Royals hitters, with an answer for most any trouble they could pose.

The Royals’ Brian Bannister was nearly as good, but not for quite as long. In the third, the Twins got a single run as Carlos Gomez scored on an error by Mark Teahen. But Bannister, victim of that lousy fielding error, stayed splendid until the seventh.

I’m sure he felt great coming to the mound to start that inning. The Royals had finally tied the game, and the tense battle might finally be tipping his way. But on the first pitch, Michael Cuddyer blasted a ball to left to nudge the Twins back into the lead.

When we try to imagine a pitcher’s psychology, we are only imposing our own ideas of what we’d feel up there. There’s no knowing if that leadoff homer rattled him, but there are some facts in the case. The Twins followed with two more hits and another run scored, and Bannister had thrown 102 pitches. Time for a reliever to restore order.

Kyle Farnsworth was selected for this duty. When last seen, Farnsworth was objecting mightily to manager Trey Hillman’s disinclination to keep him in a game. So we presume he’s back with something to prove.

But maybe Hillman had something to prove as well. Farnsworth inherited a man on first, but promptly allowed first pitch singles to Carlos Gomez and Alexi Casilla to load the bases.

There were no outs, and Farnsworth had thrown only two pitches. If there are baseball dreams of World Series-winning hits, this would be a baseball nightmare. And Hillman left Farnsworth in the game.

Still, the Twins were only ahead by a manageable two runs. If Farnsworth can tidy things up, starting with Denard Span at the plate, the Royals can stay in the game.

Not if Span has anything to say about it. His triple clears the bases, and he gets to cross home plate himself on a sac fly from Orlando Cabrera. Cuddyer gets another at bat in the inning after Joe Mauer singles, and this time Cuddy crushes the ball past the shimmering fountains in Kaufman Stadium.

It’s an eight-run inning, and the close game has become a laugher. The Royals chalked up two more runs, but even the KC fans saw them as feeble efforts. The final score was 10-3, and the Twins have the lift of a three-game winning streak.

I’ve seen many games that followed the pattern of the first six innings today, and others that resembled the exhilarating hitting in the final innings, but it’s rare that both extremes occur in a single afternoon. It made me wonder exactly why the defensive advantage in baseball can suddenly collapse.

Because, for the most part, all sports favor the defense, if only subtly. If they didn’t, offensive skills would be too coarse and common, and it would be too easy for one team with even a small edge to crush another. If you want to invent a sport, start with the how the defense can stymie the offense, and then wait for the great players to burst through those barriers.

For about a decade, offense in baseball was defined by home run hitting. Thanks to various drugs and the financial incentive for many players to use them, the defense couldn’t contain the hitters. Because the financial incentives remain as powerful as ever, we have to assume that drugs remain a part of the game, but perhaps they are a bit less common.

The game in which a batter faced nine fielders, including a cunning pitcher, evolved into the game in which a batter faced an outfield wall between 350 and 400 feet away. Just hitting the ball that far was the object, not threading it through the fielders, hitting a sacrifice fly, or figuring out what the pitcher was about to throw.

The Twins never played that type of baseball, though they now have four batters with over 20 home runs for the season, and in Justin Morneau a serious power hitter. But they play baseball within the walls more than beyond them. And a good defense can shut them down awfully well, because the batting order has numerous weak spots.

This afternoon, the Twins could only peck at Bannister for six full innings, but in the outburst of the seventh, they suddenly overmastered Bannister and Farnsworth’s every move. Was Bannister that tired and Farnsworth that off? Or did the Twins lineup come to life, all together and in especially glorious fashion?

I may be guilty of imposing a story on what I saw, but the fusillade of hits in the seventh showed me that the Twins batting order should not be written off. Seven batters hit successfully, one of them twice, and an eighth got a sac fly.

There’s no great mystery to what makes a big inning: you get two hits for every out. And today, hitters weak and strong all did something to the ball in the seventh.

It’s impossible to find the seam between offense and defense. For the first two thirds of the game, the defense did what it’s supposed to, perhaps aided just a tad by a semi-generous strike zone. None of the hitters had much to say about it.

But when the game broke open, it probably took both weakness in the defense and strength in the offense to do it. I will venture one supposition. Baseball acquaints each player, on a minute by minute basis, with success and failure. It may take less for the brain to flood with temporary certainty about one side or the other of that equation than we think.

Perhaps Bannister hated that home run and couldn’t settle down after allowing it. And perhaps Farnsworth was stunned by two consecutive first pitch hits and couldn’t summon up a shred of confidence afterwards.

Finally, perhaps every Twins hitter came to the plate with an equally inaccurate conviction, but this time it was the belief that hits were easily to be had.

No sports performance is simply self-confidence. But all the training and natural skill in the world can’t ignite without some of that belief, a far stronger tonic than the drugs that cheapened the homer into a boring currency. The subtle mental lever is much, much harder to push.

Duensing's First Win Puts Twins Over Royals 8-7

Alex Brown — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 00:53:45 -0400

Baseballs float. Only occasionally, but they do. In the eighth inning of Saturday’s game against the Royals, Michael Cuddyer lofted a ball to shallow right. It was not far beyond first base, and it hung in the air with a rapturous pause. Three fielders converged on it, but some force of fortune let the ball drop in the narrow patch of grass none of them could reach.

This hit would be classified as a blooper, as if we needed apologize for a double earned by the maddening geometry of a baseball field. And, in truth, it confers little glory on Cuddyer’s hitting prowess. But it essentially won the game, so let us now praise imperfect hits.

Cuddyer hit it right after a double play had erased a runner. But Orlando Cabrera escaped that carnage to find asylum on third base, and scored on Cuddyer’s bloop to give the Twins an 8-6 lead.

They would need it, for the Royals gave reliever Matt Guerrier all he could handle in the bottom of the ninth. (Joe Nathan wasn’t in his usual closer’s spot after pitching two full innings last night, blowing the save and then watching the Twins come back to hand him the win.) Guerrier notched a strikeout, but gave up two singles and then watched a run score on a fielder’s choice.

And the fielder appeared to make a poor choice at that. Alexi Casilla, at second base, threw to second for the sure force out while the runner was crossing the plate. But it looked like he could have started a double play to end the game. So it’s Twins 8, Royals 7 with one out to go.

Guerrier is not the majestic presence Nathan is, so the game was much in doubt here. But Royals right-fielder Josh Anderson rapped an easy grounder to second the end the game and allow the Twins to climb within three games of .500.

Baseballs floated and fell in funny ways all through the game. Early on, the Twins staked themselves to a 3-0 lead, on a solo homer from Cuddyer and a 2-RBI double from Jason Kubel one inning later. The Royals answered with a two runs of their own in the fifth.

Then the game got interesting.

Twins fans have set their alarm clocks for the sixth inning during this last week. Twice Minnesota rallied from massive deficits to tally comeback wins against the Rangers, garnering the majority of the runs in the sixth. And when they just happened to fail to obliterate another Rangers lead in the game last Thursday, it looked more like an oversight than conventional baseball odds.

So tonight, with a skinny lead in Kansas City, the Twins started the sixth by adding more proof that some minor baseball deity will smile upon their exploits in that one particular inning. Joe Mauer allowed two strikes to pile up on him, as he often does. This time he tried and failed to check a hopeless swing for strike three. But the pitch he flinched at bounced at the plate and skittered away from catcher Miguel Olivo.

Mauer, perfectly schooled in all the best baseball practices, took off immediately for first to outrun the throw on a dropped strike three. He won the race, and led off the inning on the deluxe strikeout/wild pitch combo.

Royals starter Kyle Davies banished Kubel on a fly out, but walked Cuddyer and could only obtain a fielder’s choice from Delmon Young. There were men on first and third without a hit in the inning.

Then the Twins decided to do more than surf on the weird waves of their sixth inning mojo. Brendan Harris, Carlos Gomez, and Casilla hit three neat singles in a row, sending Davies to the showers and three runs across the plate. The Twins had a perky 6-2 lead.

The Royals went on the attack to score two in the bottom of the sixth and two more in the seventh, but never gained the lead.

We always follow the score, but this was a game in which you wanted to watch the baseball itself. Denard Span misplayed a Royals hit to right that rattled to the wall in an eerie recreation of a Twins hit the bollixed the KC right-fielder the night before. I’d check that wall for hidden magnets, force fields, or maybe Severus Snape’s season ticket.

In the third inning, Alexi Casilla did a perfect Superman leap, the kind your mother doesn’t even want you trying on your bed. He followed the ball so well he was able to fly after it, laying out flat to catch it and throw to first for a double play that ended a scoring threat.

Now, it would be an exaggeration to say that the pitches Brian Duensing threw for this first major league win were as fascinating as those floating, bouncing, or flying balls. Duensing faced some pressure most innings, but his final stats are pretty: a win, three strikeouts, one walk, and six hits. Yes, he allowed two earned runs, but they came on a double from Olivio, who would be his penultimate batter. Until the fifth, Duensing kept the Royals off the scoreboard.

The Twins built themselves an especially enjoyable win tonight, but they continue to languish on the far fringes of contention. Perhaps they will be buoyed up to run off a real string of wins, but until they can repeat this success at will, we are left with the pleasure of little gems like Casilla’s lunge in the air or Mauer’s pure presence of mind or Cuddyer’s ghost-floating double. I’m happy to have these joys, and am starting to feel they’ll be all I collect this season. So savor them I shall.

Liriano and Crede Lift Twins To 7-1 Win Over Royals

Alex Brown — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 00:46:34 -0400

Whenever I’m about to lose heart, the Twins turn around and have a game like tonight’s 7-1 victory over the Royals.

Last night, just to keep this in perspective, the Twins lost 14-6. All hail the Royals, who deserve credit for the clobbering, but the real story was the bleakness of Minnesota pitching. We needed five pitchers to drag through the game, and only one of them pitched more than two complete innings.

It was such an ugly game, I literally looked away—turned it off the TV and followed it, preoccupied, on the radio until the fun finale: Brendan Harris hitting an adorably useless solo home run in the bottom of the ninth while behind by nine runs.

Bad games are one thing, but this was the kind of loss that rocks you to the core. The abject failure of starter Nick Blackburn and the entire bullpen (until Jose Mijares brought some order in the seventh) raises concern about the rest of the season. Explain, exactly, how the Twins are going to weave their way into the postseason with a rotation of Blackburn, Francisco Liriano, Carl Pavano, Scott Baker, and Anthony Swarzak.

Well, one answer popped up promptly today. Liriano pitched seven super-solid innings, collecting eight strikeouts while allowing three hits and one walk. Among those scant hits was a home run in the first, from Willie Bloomquist.

We must file it under "fluke," as it was his fourth dinger of the season.

Lirianio retired 12 in row at one stage, and was never under pressure. The Bloomquist blast in the first was bookended by strikeouts, and Liriano had nearly a 3-to-1 strike-to-ball ratio while throwing 91 pitches. It was paint by numbers pitching—the sinker had nasty movement, the pitch choices confounded the hitters, and catcher and pitcher were in a groove.

Liriano had both location and velocity working perfectly for him. Which made me wonder: how does it feel to have a whole game go your way, as Liriano’s did tonight?

For that matter, how does it feel to be part of a batting order that scores five runs on five consecutive hits, with two outs no less? In the first, the Twins had an emphatic reply to the lone Royal homer. Royals starter Brian Bannister had a rocky night, but the Twins did their main damage in the first.

Joe Mauer shot a single to left to keep his magnificent batting average ticking on upward. Justin Morneau knocked in a matching base hit, and the M&M boys waited on first and second to see what the rest of the batting order could do with two outs.

Jason Kubel and Michael Cuddyer stayed with the Cavalcade O’ Singles theme, each notching an RBI. But I don’t know—sometimes you just have to bust out of these patterns.

Joe Crede, laced with cortisone for his balky shoulder, crushed a homer to left to add three more runs. The Twins were playing happy, effortless baseball and enjoying every little moment of their win.

They scored two more in the fourth, Liriano kept up his attack on the strike zone, Matt Guerrier pitched a scoreless eighth, and Joe Nathan got to strike out the side in the ninth.

The central truth of baseball is that it’s a pleasant game laced with endless opportunity for failure. Tonight, when the hits came when they were needed and the pitches shut the opposition down, it was easy to forget how hard baseball is. It looked simple, even sweet.

Meanwhile, the Red Sox stymied the division-leading Tigers for the second straight night. Minnesota is now four games back, even with their lousy 55-58 record. They have the White Sox to worry about too, and need three games to catch them.

If they play like they did tonight, overtaking Detroit and Chicago is entirely feasible. But the starters and bullpen don’t look to have quite this much polish in them consistently. Even Liriano is no sure bet five days from now—this game may be a high water mark instead of a turning point.

A baseball season has the perfect suspense of a long, long series of very small events. Predicting is folly. The actual baseball aptitudes of the Twins roster are enough to allow many more games like tonight. And many more like last night, too.

Will they keep alternating, like a long S.O.S. signal, these wins and losses? Three games below .500 suggests that the great win streak really never will happen. But why predict? Why predict when the evidence we have, the evidence from which we’d try to build a prediction, says only one thing: you never know.

Los Angeles Angels Swarm Over Minnesota Twins, 11-5

Alex Brown — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 17:37:19 -0400

There are two guaranteed arguments for baseball fans: the value of the designated hitter and the wisdom of the hit and run. Tonight we had a successful hit and run, so somebody somewhere has a point for his side, and somebody somewhere else has a rationalization.

Debates about the hit and run are essentially varying views on baseball risk management. Managers like Earl Weaver think it’s nuts to gamble a possible out for advancing a runner.

Managers like Mike Scoscia, tonight, think the reward outweighs the risk, particularly if it takes the opponent by surprise.

It took the Twins by surprise, all right. After a four-pitch walk to Erick Aybar started the eleventh inning with the score tied 5-5, Scoscia called the play with Gary Matthews Jr at bat. The Twins had been expecting a bunt to nudge the runner over, and the fielders left a hole Matthews exploited for a single.

Now, there’s no question the hit and run worked in this instance. It was even something of the centerpiece of the Angels’ comeback. They would go on to hit six singles, collect one more walk, and score six runs to win 11-5. The Twins tried to staunch the bleeding with three different relievers, but once the Angels set to hitting, they really don’t stop.

The hit and run has a pretty problem—if it fails, it often leads to a double play, which is the very outcome it is designed to forestall. The play affects the actions of both baserunner and batter, but it is called before either can judge the pitch. It’s a blind commitment, and both players had better read the sign correctly or it unravels before it starts.

The idea is simple: the runner starts running before the ball is hit, giving him a splendid head start. If the batter fails to make contact, the runner is now trying to steal, but is more likely than usual to be thrown out, because his lead is not based on the normal read of the pitcher, or even trying to search for a slower pitch on which to run.

In a hit and run, the runner just breaks away as the pitch is thrown, without the lead he might use on a true steal.

The batter has to put the ball in play, and if he’s a good contact hitter he even gets some help here. A runner on first breaking for second obligates either the second baseman or shortstop to cover the bag, leaving a little lane for the hitter to poke a ground ball through.

If the hitter misses, the runner is usually out; if he strikes out or pops up, they both are, unless the fielders muff their chance. Try it with a bunt and two runners on base and you have the ingredients of the fabulous unassisted triple play.

Yet the rationale of the hit and run is reducing the chance of a double play by giving the runner a massive head start. The other, quieter, reason for using it is to compensate for limited power hitting skills.

A clean double may be hard to come by, but getting the bat solidly on the ball is all that’s needed for a hit and run to move a runner to third on a single, or score him on a double.

At worst, a fielder’s choice that cuts down the batter at first instead of the lead runner sets up the next hitter without the possibility of the classic second-to-first double play looming over him.

The batter has some important tasks. He needs to foul off any pitch he can’t rap out into play, and he needs to hit behind the advancing runner. Obviously, the play is not smart at certain points in the count. Tonight, Mike Scoscia used it before the Twins could see it coming.

Bobby Keppel was in for the eleventh inning. Joe Nathan had already been used to preserve the tie, and both teams were juggling their bullpens. Keppel began by walking Aybar, and instantly the inning started to have that faint whiff of trouble about it. Matthews discharged his hit and run duties perfectly, and Aybar advanced to third.

There are two basic ways to break a tie: scratch out a run using every out available, or pound your way through. The Angels started this inning as if they’d need gamble their outs for a single run, but the Twins bullpen didn’t get around to charging them any tolls on the highway. Howie Kendrick hit a single to score Aybar, and there were still no outs.

Ron Gardenhire tried to stop the misery quickly, and switched pitchers, but Jessie Crain had no better luck against the swarming singles attack of the Angels. Put it this way: you can win a lot of games with .250 hitters if they have the uncanny knack of getting their single hit of the night all in the same inning.

Chone Figgins singles to load the bases, and Maicer Izturis follows with, what else, another simple single, this one of the RBI variety. Bobby Abreu breaks up the tedium by scoring two runs on his hit, and then Juan Rivera walks.

That’s a lot of Angels marching over the basepaths, so Gardy tries the bullpen again. RA Dickey falls under the Angels’ hypno-hitting spell and dispenses a single to Kendry Morales, than snaps himself out of it.

He strikes out Mike Napoli, but allows a fielder’s choice from Aybar to score one more run. Dickey strikes out Matthews, but you almost get the feeling the Angels are ready to get back in the field and enjoy their 6-run lead.

The Twins don’t come close to answering back in the bottom of the inning. They are dispirited, even stunned. It had been a close game up to the eleventh, with good spurts of hitting by both teams.

Nick Blackburn and Ervin Santana were the starters, meeting up again, this time in the Metrodome, after last squaring off in a game the Angels took in crushing style. In that game, Blackburn had been perfect for three innings, only to unravel completely in the fourth as the Angels took a clobbering lead they would never surrender.

Tonight Blackburn gets it over with quickly by giving up a hit to Figgins to start the game. The Angels end up scoring two in the inning.

Joe Mauer sends the Twins ahead in the third with a three-run homer. He was driving in Alexi Casilla and Denard Span, and once again the Twins are working from the template of place-setting hitters getting themselves on base.

This afternoon, the Twins completed a trade for Orlando Cabrera, a traveling shortstop who moves from team to team with the sterling credential of having participated in the 2004 Red Sox World Series victory.

The .280 hitter is going to displace one of our infield lightweights, and that puts Nick Punto in the crosshairs. Tonight could be his last game for a while, maybe forever.

He doesn’t have much of a line score until the fourth inning, in which he smacks a hearty triple to score Carlos Gomez. Watching him motor hard to third is cheering. Gardenhire has an obvious soft spot for Punto, and this RBI moment may be enough to turn attention to Brian Buscher or Alexi Casilla as the player who’s forced down.

The fourth inning includes an RBI from Span, scoring Punto and placing the Twins ahead 5-2. Blackburn pitched on into the seventh, but the Angels caught up to him. There were base runners in every inning, against both pitchers, but now the Angels cash in on two of theirs, with an RBI from Izturis and a homer from Abreu.

A one-run lead is such a rickety thing. You can keep propping it up, but the smallest puff of wind is enough to collapse it. Matt Guerrier starts off the eighth inning by giving up a solo homer to catcher Mike Napoli.

Guerrier proceeds to corral three straight outs, but the tie is in place. Both teams are quiet for the ninth and tenth, and then the hit and run triggers a scoring cascade in the eleventh.

A close game disintegrated into a rout, and the Twins don’t manage that miraculous four-game win streak they need. The team has clung close to .500 all season long, and tonight’s a little example of how one startling play can set off big inning against a Twins team that can’t quite take that next step up. There’s always tomorrow, but not an infinity of tomorrows.

Twins Sweep Sox, Bottom Of The Order Comes Through

Alex Brown — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:50:28 -0400

The trading deadline is two days away and the Twins will not be solving their infield problems by acquiring Freddy Sanchez from the Pirates. That’s certain now, as the Giants have snapped him up. Other than some call-ups from the minors, we are finishing the season with Joe Crede, Brian Buscher, Brendan Harris, Nick Punto, Matt Tolbert, and Alexi Casilla.

It’s now officially fashionable to write the Twins off, precisely because of those six hitting lightweights. My theory is that any one or two of them would be fine on a major league roster, but all six become a collective liability.

Now, don’t look to a daily account for trend detection, but I’ve seen this motley group contribute to all of the recent wins, including tonight’s 3-2 squeaker that sweeps the White Sox. Maybe we can return to snapping, scarpping piranha glory again.

Alexi Casilla had two RBIs, with smooth leadoff hitter Denard Span collecting the other. The runs were all scored by the bottom of the order: Crede, Gomez, and Punto.

Add to this a bullpen that held the Sox scoreless for four innings, and an emergency start from rookie Brian Duensing, who acquitted himself well for five innings, and you have a team using all its bits and parts to stay in contention.

Duensing has been seen lately in middle relief, but tonight he was tapped to start when Francisco Liriano was pronounced in need of rest. After two serene innings, Duensing allowed a homer to Jayson Nix.

In the fifth, Carlos Quentin likewise lead off with a homer, but that was all the damage done. During the three-game series, Chicago has only been able to score on the long ball.

Jose Contreras started for the Sox, and pitched in his typical slow, lumbering manner. The Twins tapped out some hits, but had trouble putting much scoring together. But in the second, Gomez singled and Punto walked. With one out, Casilla hit an RBI double, and Span followed with a groundout that scored Punto.

At last, we’re around to the mighty section of the batting order, but all Joe Mauer can do is walk. Justin Morneau doesn’t top it all off, but strikes out. It’s the bottom of the order that does the job.

The Sox hit their two solo homers to tie it, and this game looks like it’s stuck in the same mud of the close Chicago-Minnesota playoff last season. We’re seeing a combination of pretty good—but not great—pitching and pretty poor—but not awful—hitting.

Both teams want the win fiercely. With it, the Twins can sweep the series and break out of a tie for second place in the division with the Sox. Chicago wants to avoid the sweep and not surrender the position they’ve held over the Twins for most of the season.

Tense and slow it goes, particularly when Contreras makes his languid, hypnotic throws. In the sixth, Crede leads off with a walk and Gomez executes a tidy sac bunt to advance him. Punto flies out, but Casilla raps a liner through to center to score Crede. Tie broken, slender advantage achieved.

This is not a comfortable lead, and Joe Nathan does not have a quiet ninth. Gordon Beckham leads off with a single, and the game seems ready to tilt toward the Sox.

Nathan is heading into a tough part of the order, but he grits his teeth and puffs out his cheeks to strike out Jermaine Dye. Ever so delicately, the balance leans a little Twins-ward.

But Paul Konerko won’t play along with any of that swinging at strikes business. He works a walk, and the tying run is now on second. This is what they mean by a save opportunity, because it’s just as much a loss opportunity. Ozzie Guillen brings in Dewayne Wise to run for Beckham.

Chris Getz strikes out swinging, but Mauer can’t corral the wild pitch that fooled Getz so. The runners advance.

The runners loom. It’s up to Mark Kotsay with two outs, and Nathan summons his closer’s chutzpah and throws one pitch. Kotsay bites and flies out. The sweep is complete.

A's Clobber Twins, 16-1

Alex Brown — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 01:04:57 -0400

Today was a day when you’re grateful for the long season, because it’s big enough to bury a complete collapse of offense and defense. The Twins made this three-game series with the Oakland A’s a crazy-making saga of extremes.

On Monday, the Twins managed to misplace a 10-run lead. That’s correct, they pretty much left the keys in the car and the doors unlocked and just, uh, kind of forgot where they parked it. The A’s drove off, and their final tire squeal was a blown home plate call. Michael Cuddyer actually was safe, and the Twins actually did tie the game, but a man in blue waved the A’s out of the parking lot anyway.

Yesterday, the game was a long duel, tied 2-2 all the way to extra innings. The Twins squeaked through on a Cuddyer RBI triple to avenge, very quietly, the previous night’s debacle.

This afternoon is getaway day, but the A’s don’t seem to care how late they’ll be arriving in New York for a series with the Yankees.

They got some scoring to do.

The Twins actually strike first, with a Justin Morneau solo homer off rookie Trevor Cahill in the first. It would have scored Denard Span too if he hadn’t gotten eager enough on the base paths to get caught stealing. Well, 1-0 Twins. Off we go.

Glen Perkins is pitching. When I last saw him, he was still visibly muzzle-headed from a cold. Today I have only the A’s radio announcers to rely on, but I don’t need much in the way of description. The results are telling enough. Perkins allows five runs in the first.

Matt Holliday has officially come to life in this Twins series. And I don’t think we can just blame it on Twins pitching, because Holliday has chosen an interesting moment to become a valuable hitter. The trading deadline is a little more than a week away, and the A’s are going nowhere. They will be happy to deal him, and his price is finally rising.

Nasty baseball economics aside, I’m happy for Holliday, who is finally looking at ease as an Athletic, however briefly he may remain one. A little too at ease, for he drives in the first Oakland run. The A’s bat around, with backup catcher Landon Powell nabbing another RBI, but it looks like it might be a manageable inning until Rajai Davis triples in three runs.

Ugly. Perkins has nothing out there.

And it’s not a brief loss of command but a full meltdown. He allows a single and a walk to start the second, and then gets right to dishing out the home run balls. Scott Hairston smashes in three runs and Perkins is sent to the showers.

I am busy visualizing this as the radio provides the bare framework of details. Kevin Mulvey, our brand new middle reliever who hasn’t yet suggested he will plug our bullpen holes, is up next. Is he ready to shut the A’s down, or can they feast on him too?

The answer is: pass the salt, for Mulvey gives up four more runs.

The A’s, I must remind you, are one of the weakest hitting teams in baseball, but this afternoon they’re ripping line drives left and right. It begins to look like the baseball rule makers may have made a grave error in not putting in a clock to limit such scoring sprees, because the A’s don’t seem capable of running out of gas.

Finally, mercifully, Scott Hairston, the 12th batter of the inning, flies out.

It’s 12-1, A’s.

Having just had the object lesson of being on the losing end of a massive comeback two days ago, the Twins may well have nursed some hope. Being so far down so early, you have only two choices: succumb or scrap on.

The Twins do not, in effect, do any scrapping. Cahill’s worst moment came and went in the first on Morneau’s long ball. He allows only six hits through seven innings, and not a whisper of a run.

Meanwhile, RA Dickey finally puts a cap on the gusher the A’s struck. He pitches two scoreless innings, but then that pesky hitting itch strikes Oakland again. They lash out for three more in the fifth—15-1.

Later, with Brian Duensing on the mound, the A’s go for an even number of runs when Brendan Harris makes an error to allow Kurt Suzuki to drive in Ryan Sweeney.

Yes, Kurt Suzuki is in the game. Of all things, backup catcher Powell has to leave with an injury and on getaway day, the catcher they’re trying to rest has to come in and join the scoring parade. Perhaps it’s an invigorating interlude for him.

The score is 16-1, and the Twins haven’t threatened to do anything more than sullenly field their positions since the first inning. They will amass a treasure trove of six hits through the game. They will do next to nothing with the five walks the A’s bestow on them. They will, it must be said, stink.

In the ninth, manager Bob Geren wants to try out rookie reliever Edgar Gonzalez. It’s very hard for a game like this to have an interesting ninth inning. In fact, one has to assume that players and staff are restless to get on with their getaway. But Gonzalez wants to keep us engaged.

He gets Michael Cuddyer out leading off, then walks Brendan Harris. Then he walks Brian Buscher. And then, just because there are three bases, he walks Nick Punto.

This is not the time to be experimenting with pitches. The tried and true strike is all you need to throw with a 15-run lead. Yet somehow Gonzalez is losing the knack for it.

Now, if this were the fourth inning we’d have time for the comeback that comes back from Monday’s blown lead. But it’s the ninth, with one out. Alexei Casilla has a chance to get an RBI or two, but not much chance to launch us off on a brand new winning streak.

The game ends in a swift double play, and both teams get their luggage and go. For the A’s, who take the series 2-1, there is bound to be pure joy as they head out of town. For the Twins, who have seen every possible baseball sorrow in the last three days, there is surely gloom.

I’m glad I didn’t have to watch, but the radio told me more than enough.

Joe Mauer's Hitting Slump Is Working a Double Doozy on Minnesota Twins Fans

Alex Brown — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 01:13:39 -0400

Sports outcomes are random. They are more random than we can possibly tolerate. They are so random that we are forced to tell stories to stitch them back together, to explain the randomness. What would be the point, after all, of watching people play games at a very high level if their skill wasn’t enough to banish the randomness?

Joe Mauer’s season contains too stark a contrast for us to endure the randomness in it. Right now, the random matter of his batting success has split his season in two, between a remarkable beginning and a grisly slump.

But I think his complete season will probably resemble a five-act play, not a black-and-white contrast.

Act One: He’s missing. He has surgery to relieve back problems stemming from a kidney blockage, and misses all of spring training and the first month of the season. His absence hangs over the Twins, and the team gets off to a mediocre start.

Act Two: He returns in the most triumphant fashion imaginable. Any rational fan reconciled himself to patience—Mauer couldn’t possibly have all his baseball powers fully at his fingers after such an absence. In fact, who knows how well he’ll bounce back from his back woes. But he starts May with a home run, and starts hitting for average and for power. We have never seen him look better.

Act Three: The power quietly leaks away. Mauer still hits some homers and beefy doubles, but he’s back to lacing liners into left. The swing is still shimmering, the average is still otherworldly. But that whole miracle of equaling his last year’s home run total in about one month is over.

And the glory of the average is hidden under a cloud. Missing the first month, Mauer doesn’t collect enough at bats to be in league lists until right before the All-Star break. He is at .400 for a time, but when he finally cracks the official tabulations, he’s in .380 territory.

Act Three ends with Mauer trudging off to the All-Star festivities with a cold he’s had trouble shaking and big expectations for his participation in the Home Run Derby. A week or so before, he’s treated to the Sports Illustrated cover curse—his .400 average has disappeared two days before the magazine hits the stands with a discussion of whether he’s the guy who can match Ted Williams’ feat.

Now we’re in Act Four. And what once was so startlingly easy for Mauer has become impossible. In the last game before the All-Star break, he struck out four times. He was 0-for-6 against Texas on Sunday, for the first time in his career.

His July batting average is .264, sucking his cumulative BA down to .353. After hitting better than anyone in any league at any time this season, he’s now parked behind Ichiro Suzuki. He’s struck out 11 times this month.

In tonight’s game against the A’s, through nine innings he has a strikeout and a hit. A single that advances a runner but leads to no runs. The kind of hit we fans are now looking at with our microscopes, picking it up in our tweezers to see this endangered species, Maueronomous Hittibus.

Yes, that’s how we dissect these things. We’re baseball fans, off on the sidelines, no more capable of hitting a single 90-mph pitch than we are of curing cancer. But we’re experts, and we’re desperate for meaning. Mauer’s problems are our problems, but at the exotic distance of problems we can blame on someone else. Joe! Joe!

We’re indignant, or cynical, or passionate with grief. But we’re not indifferent. It can’t be randomness. Not possible. You can’t do something beautifully for two months and then, suddenly, stop. You need magic, voodoo, superstition to break out of a slump. Because it couldn’t be random.

So now I’ll introduce some game narrative. The game was a 2-2 tie since the fourth inning. Dallas Braden started for the A’s and kept the Twins quiet but for a small outburst in the fourth, pitching seven strong innings. Anthony Swarzak started for the Twins and gave up 4 hits and 2 runs over seven innings.

We’re in the tenth. Mauer’s slump is still hanging over him, but with one out he gets a solid hit. And on Michael Cuddyer’s triple, he scores the tie-breaking run. Then in the bottom of the inning, Joe Nathan mows them down 1-2-3 to preserve the one-run lead for a Twins win.

What is a slump? It’s not merely and purely randomness. There is a massive psychological component to most slumps. Mauer’s cloud is of his own making, but he’s a distinctively well-integrated young man, from all we can tell watching him.

Remember Paul O’Neill, the Yankee right fielder who nearly exploded in fury when he struck out? Mauer is his baseball opposite. It’s reasonable to expect Mauer to work his way calmly out of this particular pit.

And while he does, none of us will be able to acknowledge the randomness of it. We literally can’t see such things. We see stories. We need stories. We have to explain the ability to hit precisely because it is a nearly inexplicable skill. Joe, I’m waiting for Act Five.

Carlos Gomez and Minnesota Twins Clock Chicago White Sox 13-7

Alex Brown — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 23:51:51 -0400

Who knows if momentum matters. Who knows if it’s real. And who knows if it will last long enough to be waiting for the Twins when they return from the All-Star break. But the Twins end with a win against the White Sox and get to peek just above that big wall labeled .500.

Scott Baker started for the Twins, and he seemed to have shrugged off his last loss. He was pitching with a brisker pace and more command, and the White Sox paid for it.

While Baker held up his end, the Twins pounded on Mark Buehrle. The distinctive point was who did the pounding. Denard Span and Brendan Harris both had excellent games, with three RBI apiece, but the standout was Carlos Gomez.

Gomez was last seen tugging his batting average upwards to .220. Perhaps he’s on a steady climb, or perhaps the Sox bring out the best in him. In any case, he hit a three-run homer in the second inning to give the Twins a 5-0 lead.

And he wasn’t done—he also had a double and a two-run single. Add the snappy shoestring catch and a couple good throws from center, and you can salute the player of the game. His average is now up to .235.

The Twins gave Buehrle trouble, and he had uncharacteristic struggles. He’s one of those fast-working pitchers who likes to get a little conveyor belt of outs going. But the Twins never let him settle in.

The first batter he faced set the tone. Denard Span worked the count a while and then tried to bunt himself on base. The bunt was rolling in that no-man’s-land along the first base line.

Buehrle charged it in case it would be plainly fair, then realized it would roll foul. Buehrle had to make an acrobatic step or two to avoid touching the ball, but the big man pulled it off.

It looked like Span had been well and truly outfoxed. But on the next pitch, Span shifted from first gear to overdrive and parked a homer in right. There would be no luck for Buehrle the rest of the outing, and he left after one out in the fourth, with the Twins up 8-1.

In the sixth, Baker showed some of that troubling inability to finish hitters and innings off. With two outs, he walked Alexei Ramirez, then gave up a single to Jermaine Dye.

That brought Jim Thome to the plate. Thome is a true professional hitter, looking for his pitch, knowing what he’s paid to do with it. Baker can’t trick him, Baker can’t dodge him, and finally, Baker can’t beat him. Thome hit a three-run homer to re-energize the Sox. They were still behind by four runs, but that big Twins lead quickly wilted away.

The Sox scored another run in the seventh, off Jose Mijares in relief, and it looked for a moment as if the tide was turning for good. But in the bottom of the seventh, the entire Twins lineup came to the plate, and five more runs are up on the board.

That’s the way to re-deflate the White Sox—get 13 runs on the board. But Chicago stayed scrappy, and mustered a single run in both the eighth and ninth. These are meaningless to the outcome, but self-respect counts when going into the All-Star vacation. The final score is 13-7, and the Twins take the series 2-1.

The All-Star break may actually hold some peril for the Twins. Beloved Joe Mauer is entitled to the same ebb and flow as any baseball player, but I don’t think I’m the only fan wracked with worry at the pattern discernable in Mauer’s last several games.

He’s been grounding out to second, or flying out well short of the left field wall that was his home to his homers in May and June. The delightful burst of power he brought when starting his season in May is trickling away. We can live without it, but what does it mean to get that power swing going and then to lose it?

Of further concern, Mauer is not rapping out the singles and doubles that are his stock in trade. This afternoon, he did the unthinkable—struck out four times.

Mauer is a collected young man, capable of disregarding the slings and arrows of baseball fortune. He can have slumps and rise again. But I confess to concern as he has several lousy days at the plate and then marches off to participate in the freak show that is the current incarnation of the Home Run Derby.

This hitting display used to be a fairly low-key competition between the American and National Leagues. Now, as Fox likes to say, This time it counts. As in, this time it puts individual hitters under an idiotic blend of pressure and self-aggrandizement.

Remember Bobby Abreu? He won the contest, handily, and then spent the rest of the season in the greatest power drought of his career.

Everyone is watching, and they’re watching for only one thing—more homers! Further! Deeper! Faster! No matter how sweet the tosses, no hitter can keep launching blast after blast. And any hitter will feel pressure to swing at everything, even balls that couldn’t be turned into home runs by Barry Bonds at his most juiced.

So I stand concerned about Mauer getting himself into this stinking contest. Notably, Justin Morneau, last year’s winner, declined to make a second showing.

I hope Mauer stays mellow, falls out in the first round, and enjoys his All-Star start. And then comes back having forgotten the last week of regular season play. Conserve yourself, Joe, for a fresh start for the second half.

Brad Radke Inducted Into Twins Hall of Fame

Alex Brown — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 21:58:34 -0400

Sports fans are entitled to various idiosyncrasies, and mine include disproportionate affection for Brad Radke, Twins pitcher from 1995 through 2006.

“Disproportionate” is the term others would apply; I feel entirely justified in proclaiming Radke among my all-time favorite players.

Now that the Twins have inducted him into their Hall of Fame, here’s my three-point case for Radke.

First, he played his entire career for the Twins. Around the middle of his career, the current free agent bonanza started up in earnest.

A player with any kind of success whatsoever was supposed to change teams and quadruple his salary as soon as his first day of free agency came round.

Radke was not the CC Sabathia of his day, but he was a notch or two above some typical recent cash-ins, like Gil Meche, Carl Pavano, and Erik Bedard. The starkest parallel is to Johan Santana, who came into the Twins rotation alongside Radke.

No, Radke couldn’t have gotten Santana dollars, but he certainly could have left Minnesota as Santana did. Santana left for the sake of leaving, as the Mets topped the Twins’ offer by a negligible amount but offered a preferred zip code.

Radke didn’t leave for money, and he didn’t leave for fame. In fact, it appears he may have stayed not only because he liked the Twins organization plenty well, but because a bigger city was not to his liking.

Point two: he was a finesse pitcher, who played with wits and cunning. He had a fine fastball, but it wasn’t atomic, nor possessed of as much movement as the Roger Clemens signature heater.

He had an above-average curveball, which he could throw ahead or behind in the count, but, again, it wasn’t the curveball of the ages.

Then he had a changeup. His arm action sold it as a fastball, and it was an out pitch that left the strikeout victim muttering on the way back to the dugout.

Radke changed speeds well, and he also pitched to the corners. He liked to start a hitter with a strike that might glide just low enough to fool him. Then another strike, this one biting the inside. Third pitch was often well outside, and plenty of batters chased it.

Radke moved the ball left and right, up and down, fast and slow. It sounds simple, but it isn’t. Many pitchers try to overwhelm with power, but Radke was very Greg Maddux-like in his craft.

Radke had two crucial flaws, and they got larger toward the end of his career. He let hitters get under the ball, and this could lead to easy outfield plays.

It could also lead to home runs. It often led to home runs. It led to some home runs in playoff games that Radke, and all Twins fans, would prefer not to recall. (Oakland, Anaheim...)

His other flaw was pretty puzzling. It always seemed like more a statistical anomaly than a real trait, but year after year it only grew more prominent. Radke could not get through the first inning without giving up runs.

I don’t have the stats at my command, but I have a well-formed memory of seeing him stake the opposing team to a lead game after game.

He tried everything to shake this bugbear, shuffling his game-starting routine in myriad ways, but there was something about starting a game that just made him crazy.

If he didn’t allow a score in the first, all the Twins fans sighed with relief and assumed he’d march on to the win; certainly the odds swung all the way round into his favor.

Radke was otherwise a solid pitcher, capable of going deep in games and deep into the season. He pitched over 200 innings nine of his 12 years, and the injuries that prevented him the other times were severe.

The high inning consumption rate was one reason I located him when trolling for players on my first fantasy team.

I latched onto Radke for fantasy baseball and lived and died with his every start. It was watching Radke that got me watching the Twins.

When he retired three years ago, I wasn’t truly sure I’d stay a fan, but here I am. Here I am, watching Kevin Slowey pitch with quite a bit of Radke about him.

Point three: Radke pitched well when it counted, and boosted the Twins into the playoffs four times.

He won 20 games in 1997, 12 in a row, though he never came close to 20 in subsequent years.

It was his stellar season, and he came in third in the Cy Young voting behind the roadblock of Roger Clemens and Randy Johnson.

He pitched when he hurt, working through a torn labrum and stress fracture in his shoulder in his final season. He pitched hurt and he pitched hard, and I’d like to interpret his work as pitching with heart.

So perhaps I have made a sufficiently airtight case for you to understand why I'm partial to Brad Radke. I doubt I’ve persuaded you that Radke belongs in the Hall of Fame.

I couldn’t put him there myself—a career 4.22 ERA and merely average W-L and WHIP means that Radke stands out for durability more than dazzle.

Still, among Twins, he’s a standout, ranking third in wins and fourth in strikeouts among Twins pitchers. Saturday night, he was inducted into the Twins own Hall of Fame.

That means a vinyl banner hangs in the Metrodome for the last 40 or so games to be played there. I hope a less plastic-based shrine awaits him in the new park.

Saturday night, Radke made a short speech. He spoke haltingly, and with some emotion, thanking teammates, friends, and fans.

Nothing special, just your standard sports hero clichés, but Radke is so sincere that you pause to listen. To listen and to remember him playing, playing with dignity and that stoicism that was the closest he could get to joy.

Just a few bits of flashback video brought it all back to me—the high leg kick, sure, and the downward follow through. But I also remembered what they edited out, his inessential motions on the mound.

There was the pointed toe scuffing the dirt in a sharp line, and the look down into the glove. His earnest, impassive face. Radke at peace with his pitching skills, a picture I want to keep forever.

Twins: Blackburn Backed Up By Team in 6-4 Win

Alex Brown — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 23:35:39 -0400

It took the whole team to win Friday night. The credit for RBI can be individually allocated, but the win took offense and defense, and every man on the team can feel like the player of the game.

This was the first of three games against the White Sox, the last series before the All-Star break. There seems to be something about being ripped to shreds by the Yankees that makes you want to beat up on the next guy. When the Twins last met the White Sox, after losing four games in Yankee Stadium, all by slim margins, they ended a 7-game losing streak by clobbering the Sox.

Tonight was no score-fest, but might have been demoralizing to Chicago in an entirely different way. The Twins had a lead and lost it, then used all their defensive prowess to stay in the game, and finally got past a tie late in the game to carve out a 6-4 win.

Nick Blackburn was good enough to pitch seven innings, but bad enough to have some trouble every inning. In this game, it wasn’t a pitcher as an individual hero or goat, but a pitcher as one of the nine men making each out.

Blackburn is a contact pitcher, so his wins always owe something to sure hands in the infield. In addition to solid routine plays, we had a few sparklers in this game. Brendan Harris ran hard to catch a line drive, tumbled to throw to first, where Morneau dug out the low toss for an out. Nick Punto sealed up the slot between first and second and made two superhero snares.

The highlight reel play belonged to Michael Cuddyer. The Sox mounted a threat in the sixth, starting the inning with two hits. Chris Getz hit a massive fly ball to right. While it was in flight, I considered the likely outcomes, either a three-run homer or double scoring two. Interpreting fly balls from a television picture means listening to the crowd gasp or cheer and watching the intensity of the outfielder’s scramble. This one looked, and sounded, bad.

Michael Cuddyer kept pedaling back and back, the prelude to letting a home run sail over the blue plastic. But he pedaled and planted, and then leapt to slam into the fence and grab the ball. Sac fly, the alternative I’d overlooked. And a rally-sapping sac fly. The White Sox get only that run in the inning.

The Twins started the game playing with house chips. John Danks had one of the ugliest first innings imaginable. He simply couldn’t find the strike zone, and while hunting and pecking for it, he walked the first four batters he faced. Four, you read that right. He walked in the first run of the game.

The Twins went on to score three more on a Jason Kubel double and a Michael Cuddyer single. I watched the hits mount up, but I kept feeling that Danks was going to get his control back just as suddenly as he’d lost it and that we needed to be careful not to coast.

It was a different type of control he got back. Cuddyer was lounging off the first base bag and Danks picked him off for the first out of the inning. It was just the lift the pitcher needed. He struck out Joe Crede and got Delmon Young to line out.

Blackburn let the Sox chip away at that 4-0 lead. They scored single runs in the second, third, fourth, and sixth. Meanwhile, the Twins seemed unable to get over the gifts they received in the first inning. Then too, Danks returned to form and had a string of 1-2-3, innings. The last good thing that happened to the Twins was Cuddyer’s hit. The first of a long list of bad things was Cuddy getting picked off.

In the bottom of the seventh, tied 4-4, Nick Punto makes a key contribution. It’s not a hit, because that’s just plain unlikely for him these days. It’s not a bunt, because that’s going to take a little too much luck with his good but not supergood speed. It’s a walk, because a walk is all he can get out of reliever Octavio Dotel.

Denard Span hopes for a hit, settles for a sacrifice and Punto’s at second. Brendan Harris notches an out, and Joe Mauer’s up. Joe Mauer is almost a good-luck charm you simply rub for a hit or a win, but lately, it must be said, the power surge of May is falling off, and the high average of June is trickling down just a bit. In other words, Mauer has human DNA. He’s been grounding out to second a lot lately, so nothing’s automatic with him at the plate.

It’s not automatic, but it’s beautiful enough. Punto steals third, and Mauer plants a single straight through to center. Tie broken.

It’s not a great Twins game if Mauer and/or Morneau don’t get in on the scoring, so we almost all the elements of a sweet Twins win. The last two pieces: A hit from one of the scrappier hitters, and a Joe Nathan sweated-out save.

In the eighth, Kubel leads off with a double and the desired insurance run seems within reach. But then it begins receding from view after two outs. All we have now is Carlos Gomez coming to bat, and Gomez is in about the same hitting pit that is currently swallowing up Punto.

Ron Gardenhire has already brought Matt Tolbert in to run for Kubel, but Gomez is going to need a true hit to collect an RBI and give the Twins a cushion. He hits what I will freely proclaim his best bunt of the season. It wanders straight toward the mound, and Bobby Jenks can’t begin to corral it before Gomez rockets to first and Tolbert scores. This play goes into workbook they’ll use at The Carlos Gomez Bunting Academy.

Nathan takes it hard on the mound, and his duel with Chris Getz takes eight pitches. Nathan is not a fast worker, and he seems to marshal his courage all over again for each pitch. But he gets Getz, by a ground out, nd the next two hitters as well.

It’s Blackburn’s win and Nathan’s save, but this game took every player to win.

Seattle Mariners 4 Minnesota Twins 2: Too Many Left on Base

Alex Brown — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 22:04:30 -0400

The Twins end up losing the weekend series with Seattle 1-2, and the season series 4-6. Not a sterling start to this road trip, but not a humiliating defeat either.

Yesterday the Twins lost by a run; Friday they won by one. This afternoon, they lost by two. Kevin Slowey, uncharacteristically, gave up three home runs today and left after four innings, but he didn’t really lose by much.

Tiny margins can keep the pitching staff from feeling too oppressed, but it should also be noted that over the past three games the Twins have cranked out a total of 5 runs.

Diagnosing the problem is easy, as it always is in sports. Too many men left on base! All we have to do is score more runs, and the raw material is sitting right there to be used.

In sports, the spectator can always see exactly what’s wrong. How can you not? Sports failures are blazingly obvious, since they involve not doing the especially difficult thing that the sport is about. Just throw strikes. See the ball, hit the ball. Make that diving catch!

Over this series in Seattle, the Twins left perhaps 20 men on base while scoring those five delicate little runs. Four times today alone we had the leadoff man on base. We ended numerous innings with men on and two out. A difficult hitting situation to be sure, but it’s also unusual to fail to cash in quite this often.

So I’ll go a step further in diagnosing the problem. The Twins, all season, have had a bit of a problem getting the cylinders of the entire lineup to fire.

In April, almost all the production came from lefties Denard Span, Justin Morneau, and Jason Kubel, with some righty help from Joe Crede. Mauer, you’ll recall, missed the month.

There was a sharp dropoff from the lower part of the batting order in righthanders Delmon Young, Michael Cuddyer, Alexi Casilla, Brendan Harris, Matt Tolbert, and Carlos Gomez.

In May, Mauer returned and Cuddyer seemed to come to life as well. For a few games we had the whole crew rowing together, but it became clear that certain hitters were going to have dismal seasons: Punto, Gomez, Tolbert, and Casilla looked semi-hopeless. However, the cardinal rule of baseball is that hope is always possible.

In this Seattle series, we’ve begun the month of June with some extra life in the lower half of the order. Casilla was demoted for a while and returned with his skills and focus improved; he’s been hitting a bit. Tolbert has been situationally sharp, coaxing walks when he can. Brendan Harris now has a 12-game hitting streak going.

Cuddyer has just come off the DL with a still-inflamed right index finger, while Punto remains sidelined, so we’ll see about the two of them. Young and Gomez remain question marks, but Gomez is so valuable as a defensive replacement in center field and a pinch runner that he will have a role.

So the bright side is that there’s been a little improvement in the bottom of the batting order. Unfortunately, for the last three games we’ve seen problems, for the first time all season, with the top half.

Joe Mauer has been merely mortal for about two weeks now. He’s still toting an average over .400 thanks to his hot start, but the bonus shower of home run power has disappeared.

I’m not even sure I want to wish for it back, because it was such a different aspect of his game that I worry he would lose his knack for contact. In any case, it’s been two full weeks since Mauer had his Superman cape on to save the game.

Morneau is perhaps marshalling his strength for the long season. In any case, he’s not depositing dingers or rocketing RBIs with the same consistency. And Span had a miserable day yesterday, though it was the first bad day I can remember for him all season.

In this series, Kubel hit two lofty balls that wilted in the Seattle atmosphere, falling short of breaking open the game. His bat has remained tepid to hot, but it must be noted that he hasn’t approached the power display of the early season.

Can we draw any conclusions? Sports fans, including me, are fabled for our short attention spans. It was only last Thursday that we clobbered the Indians, scoring over 10 runs if memory serves.

After three games in Seattle, I’m supposed to see a pattern? It might be the much simpler pattern that arises from time to time, namely: it’s tough to score runs against major league pitchers.

If there is a more profound pattern here, it’s probably that it’s difficult to get the entire batting order to hit in any kind of productive flow. Last season, the Twins almost patented success at precisely that, collecting small but timely hits from top to bottom of the order.

I think it was Ozzie Guillen who labeled the lightweight, persistent Twins hitters, like Nick Punto, piranhas. They just kept snapping and biting.

It’s probably harder to make that come true than to buy Mark Teixeira, Alex Rodriguez, and Johnny Damon and put them on the same team. For the Twins in 2008, it happened over an entire season, but it hasn’t really occurred in 2009.

The only change in the lineup is adding Joe Crede to eliminate the constant shuffle at third base, and having Cuddyer available every day. Where did our fierce, nibbling fish go?

They didn’t go away, they just paused to show us how very difficult it is to hand the hitting baton smoothly through the lineup. We’re hitting the way most teams do now, with one or two guys having a hot day and everyone else cooling off. Pooling hitting powers is rare; magnificent, but rare.

Yet the Twins have done it from time to time already. They haven’t exasperated their opponents with a consistent, coherent attack, but they have had their hitting barrages.

Recent high-scoring games against the White Sox and Indians showed one version of it; nail-biting wins against other clubs (almost all of them in the friendly confines of the Dome) portray the other style.

We left way too many men on base this weekend. Just as every team does form time to time, because getting the hits to flow is expecting nature to plant trees in a row instead of the chaos of the forest.

I don’t apologize for the Twins here, I simply recognize a harsh baseball truth. For example, the Mariners were equally guilty—they scored seven runs all weekend and marooned just as many men.

The problem is easy to diagnose—score more runs! The solution lies in the delicate, strange region where ability and desire mesh, but so briefly the confluence is always at risk.

Twins Sweep Brewers; Baker's Back

Alex Brown — Mon, 25 May 2009 00:55:09 -0400

Two weeks ago, the Twins were 15-17, hanging on in the AL Central thanks to a division-wide inability to climb much above .500.

After tonight, the team is 22-23, and the 13 games formed a neat pattern: a three-win sweep of the Tigers, six straight losses, and now four wins in a row. Emphatic pendulum swings, and not much change in final outcome. We’re three-and-a-half behind Detroit, a half game back of KC.

The Twins swept the mighty Brewers, who now slip a notch to make room for the Cardinals in tie for first in the NL Central. They didn’t see the Twins coming. For weeks, the Brewers had been playing so well they had a 21-5 winning patch. In this series, their power seemed to desert them. It’s also fair to give the Twins pitchers a tip of the hat.

Tonight, Scott Baker had his best game of the season. He had had a collection of very fine innings so far, amounting to five losses, one squeaker of win plus one blowout victory.

Baker pitched into the ninth, but after getting one out and giving up a two-run homer he made way for Joe Nathan. Nathan, I’m happy to report, looked like rock solid Joe again—two strikeouts, no funny stuff.

Since missing the first two weeks of the season, Baker has never seemed in full possession of his game. Except for the easy-breezy 11-0 win against Seattle, Baker has given up at least four runs in each of his seven prior starts. And these runs were usually in big fat clusters, many times looking like meltdowns.

But Baker-watchers, take note. There is a trend here, and it’s not Scott Baker falling apart. Here’s his ERA after each start, in order: 13.50, 12.46, 9.82, 9.15, 6.83, 6.95, 6.98, 6.32.

Here’s the innings pitched: 4, 4.2, 6, 6, 7, 6, 5, 8.1.

Now, this doesn’t chart like a rocket going off, but we need to stop making every game fit the memorable pattern of one hideous inning ruining the other decent ones. Baker gave up a solo homer to Mike Cameron in the fourth, but that single run was all the Brewers managed until the ninth.

His final line was three earned runs, seven hits, six strikeouts, no walks. Those other two runs came after Casey McGehee scored on Prince Fielder’s one-out homer in the ninth. Baker has bottled up Prince Fielder, big power threat, all night, but somehow the big guy found a way to get his last homer in the Metrodome.

Baker may not have cured all his crochets, but I’d advise the fantasy players who are repulsed by his ghastly ERA to scoop him up off waivers and start him.

The Twins have still not come down from their scoring high in Chicago on Thursday. In this fun four-game win streak, they’ve scored 43 runs, including six tonight.

It didn’t look like another scoring barrage was in store until late in the game. Joe Mauer homered in the first for our typical early, skinny lead. In the fourth, the Brewers tied it on Cameron’s blast.

Joe Crede answered back right away in the bottom on the fourth with, yes, another solo homer. That tense 2-1 lead kept Milwaukee’s Dave Bush dueling Scott Baker.

In the seventh inning, the turning point for so many games, Bush got two quick outs. Nick Punto, who got to start today in hopes of nudging his average above the Mendoza line, did the only thing he really could do to get on base: he walked.

Carlos Gomez was batting leadoff to give Denard Span time to recover from “flu-like symptoms” (amazing that sports reporters don’t get to the bottom of this one—it’s a hangover, right?).

Gomez is still a lovable, enthusiastic young player, but he’s no longer bunting for dollars, which means he’s limited to the very occasional single. But happy day, he gets one: an infield dribbler that he can just beat out.

Joe Mauer is up. So far, he’s homered, singled, and flied out. Ken Macha sent in Mitch Stetter, something of a specialist in retiring pesky lefities, to relieve Bush. Mauer looks at a strike and lets two balls go by. The next pitch whips in high and tight, smashing Mauer’s hand wrapped around the bat.

The umpire calls it a foul tip while Mauer presents his wounded paw to trainers who watch the bruise bloom. Mauer starts walking to first but home plate umpire Adrian Johnson calls him back: you’re not done here, son.

Mauer, our franchise player and hero of heroes, may have had his hand crushed and you want to call it a foul tip? Ron Gardenhire is instantly out of the dugout.

Big shouting match with the home plate umpire, but this one has visual aids. Mauer presents his swollen right hand. Johnson and Gardenhire keep yelling, and now Gardy’s cap is off and there’s the classic picture of fury.

But this time, the heavens part: Mauer is sent on to first, and Johnson overturns his call. You couldn’t tell it from the demeanor of the umpire or the manager, but they actually reached agreement out there.

Maybe this is how all conversations with umpires go: (indignantly) Thanks for lending me your belt sander! (angrily) You’re welcome!

This little hit by pitch call will end up mattering. Justin Morneau is up next and he would need to see but one pitch from Mr. Stetter to find the one he likes: grand slam hit to that high right field spot Morneau likes to tag.

Twins win, 6-3, and all nine runs were scored on home runs.

The Twins’ power surge is getting positively scary now. I’m not entirely ready to exult in it, because home run power tends to ebb and flow.

The ability to beat out a steady tattoo of singles and doubles, to construct scoring opportunities, and to rely on all the moving parts of the team to get the job done are the attributes that made me love the Twins in the first place. If they’re going to pound their way to victory it simply won’t be as interesting.

But for now, I’ll make an exception and savor the win.

Minnesota's Rookie Anthony Swarzak Wins Debut for Twins

Alex Brown — Sun, 24 May 2009 00:49:04 -0400

All sports, even baseball, have a clock. The ticking you only barely hear is the lifespan of a player.

Every one of them has an arc, and sometimes it’s quite pronounced with a great crown of excellence. Excellence that, still, only lasts awhile. Others march along, perhaps for a very long time, manifesting their median over and over.

Whoever they are, and however we might measure their skills, the shape of the arc is unknown until the last play of the career is made.

We like to get a drop on anointing the truly remarkable ones though, trying hard to sift through the stats and the early efforts to foresee the hall of fame voting. We want to know right away, long before the work is finished.

And we are usually too generous. In 1981, Fernando Valenzuela became the first pitcher to win the Rookie of the Year and the Cy Young. He deserved it: he pitched eight shutouts that year, lead the league in strikeouts, and had a sweet 2.48 ERA.

His career had some other fine moments, most of them in just the next five years, but it’s fair to say his peak was brief, unrepeatable, glorious, and gone.

We don’t need any more instructive examples of how fleeting talent can be. Who wants to be reminded? But sportscasters and my fellow bloggers today devote great attention to picking the players who will rise the highest and the fastest.

The obsession with rookies shows up in many quarters. Topps and Upper Deck devote lavish attention to rookie baseball cards these days, minting up great batches of them.

Here are potential heroes, all glossy and bright, photographed with bats on their shoulders in uniforms they haven’t once gotten dirty.

A vast number of these baseball cards will be worthless in a year or two, but because one of them will be another Albert Pujols, we collect them and hope. I have an absurd number myself. Say, when is Ryan Garko going to get to the next level?

There are endless websites and magazine articles dissecting rookies. Steven Strasburg, the hellfire pitching prospect who will top the draft next month, appears more often in Sports Illustrated than Justin Morneau.

Have you seen Strasburg’s furious pitching glare? But other than seeing his vicious gameface, all I know about him is that he is the greatest pitcher of all time except he hasn’t pitched yet.

Baseball’s draft pales compare to football’s, where even the combine auditions are on TV, and the draft itself is sold as a competition with winners and losers.

It’s common for football rookies to earn more than many of the veterans on the team they are joining. These players who haven’t even survived a pro training camp are being paid entirely on the basis of speculation.

Speculators we are, even the fans. Where to place my affections this season, and my precious time? I don’t want to be late finding the next great rookie.

The rookies flow on in a constant stream. The veterans depart with less fanfare. Suddenly you realize: Hey, no Fred McGriff this year. No more Eric Karros. And whatever happened to Marquis Grissom?

But you can only notice the holes they left if you concentrate, because the rookies filling those spots redirect your attention. It’s the triumph of youth over age, potential over old news. I grow old, my sports team stays eternally young.

Tonight, against the Brewers, the Twins sent 23-year-old Anthony Swarzak to the mound. He was called up a few days ago to fill the hole Glen Perkins made while on the DL. Swarzak gets to pitch his first game in the majors on a home field, with Joe Mauer calling the game, and his mom and stepfather sitting behind home plate.

Nice touches, but he’s still gotta be nervous, right? The rookie must show that special balance of bravado and awestruck humility. We don’t want him steamrollering our existing heroes, but on the other hand we need that galactic-size confidence that signals success.

Swarzak appeared pretty cool up there, and he weight of the occasion didn’t affect him. He ended up with a solid starter’s line: seven innings pitched, 98 pitches, five hits allowed, 3 Ks, 2 walks. And no runs. No runs at all.

The shutout was squandered in the eighth, by Matt Guerrier, but the Twins won the game on both offense and defense. In addition to Swarzak’s fine debut, Joe Mauer started his next hitting streak by going 3-for-3 with two RBI and a homer, Joe Crede popped another solo shot, and the team scored a total of six runs.

Swarzak had his share of self-induced pitching jams. He had runners on base most innings and did not have the strike zone pegged at times, but wiggled out of trouble each time. Some of the Brewers’ hits were lucky liners; the three walks actually were the bigger blot on Swarzak’s first outing.

Swarzak was drafted high by the Twins in 2004, and has generally progressed well. He got himself a 50-game suspension in 2007 for a positive drug test, but CBS Sports reports that it wasn’t a performance enhancer. Does that mean it was recreational?

Who knows what they do and don’t test now. In any case, he appears ready to work at what Bert Blyleven loves to call “the major league level.”

When Perkins comes off the DL next week, the Twins will probably make room for Swarzak in the bullpen. Craig Breslow, a lefty, has been lost on the waiver wire, but he was replaced by recent callup Sean Henn as the southpaw companion to Jose Mijares. There is still plenty of room for someone like Swarzak to contribute.

Swarzak’s first game has a whole list of happy things for him to remember for the rest of his life. A win, scoreless innings, a happy crowd welcoming him to the bigs. No one knows how this game fits in with the rest of his career, but there’s no reason to dial down the hope yet.

I’m thinking about rookies tonight because the game began with a goodbye before this hello. Corey Koskie was honored after officially retiring this year. He left baseball far sooner than he wanted to, after a concussion kept him out for a season and his comeback finally sputtered.

Here’s Koskie, reminding me of the Twins of his era, and though it seems like it wasn’t long ago, none of his teammates remain. He played for the Twins from 1998 to 2004, and was part of the seismic shift that got the team back into contention.

I can recall the lineup around him from memory: AJ Pierzinski, Doug Mientkiewicz, Luis Rivas, Christian Guzman, Matt Lawton, David Oritz (you can look it up), and Shannon Stewart. I’m not sure I got the exact team from any given year, but the players are there in my memory. Nudged aside, one by one, by rookies.

Twins-Brewers: Michael Cuddyer Hits for the Cycle and Twins Keep Winning

Alex Brown — Sat, 23 May 2009 01:19:49 -0400

Interleague play began Friday, and the Twins faced the Milwaukee Brewers. The Brewers happen to be one of the hottest teams in all of baseball right now, with an impressive 26-16 record, second only to the Dodgers in winning percent. They’re keeping both the Cardinals and the Cubs out of first place in the NL Central.

In other words, the exuberant scoring in yesterday’s rout of the White Sox might be short lived.

They faced Manny Parra on Friday and kept up the barrage. The final score was 11-3, giving the Twins 31 runs in their last two games.

They couldn’t even wait. It started in the first with Mauer engineering a walk and Morneau a single. In Gardenhire’s new lineup—don’t change a thing!—Spans leads off and then we go straight to the M&M show.

Michael Cuddyer got the four spot Friday, though Jason Kubel would have occupied it were he not a late scratch with a knee problem.

Welcome to the cleanup spot, Michael Cuddyer. I have to be honest. I saw Cuddyer start the season in ho-hum fashion, and then watched happily as he seemed to find his stroke. It was a bit of a light switch being flipped, and I confess I doubted he could hold on to the solid hitter’s groove.

But as his eye traveled like a laser down his bat as he located a fat pitch from Parra, he extended his arms and laced the ball deep to left. It was such a sweet, clear swing—a perfect coil of power and grace. The three-run homer got the Metrodome fans rocking and the Twins off to an early lead.

To score 11 runs takes contributions from almost everybody, but the Twins still had a true player of the game. In four at-bats, Cuddyer hit for the cycle. He started with the homer, got a double in the third, and a single in the fourth. By then, he had four RBI, had scored two runs, and was 3-for-3.

In the sixth, Denard Span led off with a homer, Mauer struck out, and then Morneau singled. Cuddyer is up. Yes, it’s yet another time when a player is but a triple away from hitting for the cycle. In Cuddyer’s case, this looked like an especially academic possibility.

A few weeks ago, we saw Jason Kubel complete the feat, and he has a similar physique. By which I mean, a bit too thick and stout to make triples hitting anything but a statistical abnormality.

Brewers manager Ken Macha had seen enough from Cuddyer tonight, so he brings in a new relief pitcher Jorge Julio to try to quiet him down. And at first Julio looks like the man for the job. Two quick strikes. Then a ball. Then a classic Julio surprise, a wild pitch.

On his next delivery, Cuddyer splinters his bat as he deposits the ball in the luckiest little line over the third-base bag, barely fair, totally unfieldable. The ball rockets along the foul line all the way to the left-field corner.

Brewers are chasing it, no doubt, but Cuddyer is running his heart out. First. Second. And a gasping plunge into third—safe!

The cycle is an arbitrary expression of skill. There are more profound ways to affect the outcome of a game, and any night with four hits is arguably just as impressive. But the certain poetry of it is undeniable—all possible hits, hit!

This season threatens to cheapen the miracle. Kubel accomplished his during a week when two other players also bucked the odds. Now we have two Twins in one season. The last time two teammates had cycles was in 2003, when Vladimir Guerrero and Brad Wilkerson hit ‘em for the Montreal Expos.

Oddly, two Twins have also shared cycle honors in the same season: Larry Hisle and Lyman Bostock did it in 1976.

I hope we haven’t seen a real end to the exotic rarity of the cycle, because I still want to stand up and cheer when it happens. Tonight Cuddyer went 4-for-5 with a career-high five RBI. This was also his third consecutive game with a homer.

Cuddyer gives the Twins a great arm in right field. I have had some doubts as to his significance at the plate, but I’m ready to let this year’s performance change my mind. After his slow start, Cuddyer is still hitting only .275, with a .364 OBP. That puts him around the league average.

Cuddyer had his best year in 2006, playing in 150 games and getting his average to .284 and OBP to .362. He had a big power surge that year too, hitting 24 homers to notch .504 in SLG. His OPS was .867. All these numbers were above average, and the Twins have been waiting for that player to come back.

In 2007 the drop-off was most acute in the power department. He hit only 16 homers, and the RBI dropped from 109 to 81. Just as telling, his doubles were down by a third, just like the homers. Last season, he had a thumb injury that cut his playing time in half. It was a rickety year all around, and he managed only a .249 average.

In the last three weeks, Cuddyer has shown the great swing of his past peak, and I believe he may be combining it with greater plate discipline and insight into opposing pitchers. We may be seeing a real blossoming, not just a temporary spike.

He is still only on pace to match that 24 home run high, but more importantly he appears to be the strong right-handed bat the Twins need to keep the lineup a minefield for opposing pitchers.

Cuddyer is 34, so a career year is unlikely. But a solid, consistent contribution to the team is all we are asking for, and it appears we’re going to get our wish.

Twins-White Sox: Twins Take Down Sox, 20-1

Alex Brown — Fri, 22 May 2009 00:07:50 -0400

Baseball is simple, particularly if the wind is blowing out to left field on a warm, clear day.

The Twins dragged a six-game losing streak in behind them, but left Chicago with much lighter baggage. They concluded the three-game series with the White Sox with a walloping win, so bursting with superlatives it’s hard to convey the nutty, excessive joy of it.

The Twins scored 20 runs. The White Sox managed only one, in the eighth inning. This last, lonely bit of scoring elicited big cheers from the remaining fans in the seats, according to my radio broadcasters.

One doesn’t want to gloat, but the pure ease of coasting through a game in which the team scores in six of the innings, gets a lead in the first, totes up seven runs in the second to vanquish the starter, and still has another six-run inning to come—this is euphoric baseball.

Hyperbolic baseball, actually. Joe Mauer had the kind of stat line fantasy players fantasize about: 3-for-4, a grand slam, six RBI, a double, a sac fly. This is also game 14 in his current hitting streak. PS, he hit the grand slam with two outs.

Mauer was in the DH slot today, batting second in Ron Gardenhire’s shaken, not stirred, new lineup. The key change was doing away with the dual leadoff plan of Denard Span followed by whatever mild-hitting infielder fit the bill, typically Brendan Harris.

Gardy cut to the chase with this lineup: Span, Mauer, Morneau, Kubel, Cuddyer, Morales, Tolbert, and Punto.

There is a much debate from many quarters about lineup tweaking, but I am fully persuaded by the folks at Baseball Prospectus that the optimal lineup is not based on alternating lefties and righties, or putting your mightiest hitting in the four-hole, bracketed by the two sub-mightiest.

No, the ideal order is a sequence beginning with the very best hitter, and then tailing off.

Gardy pretty well followed that pattern today, but he’d have to start with Morneau to get it exactly right. The logic is that you want your best hitters to have the most at-bats.

Now, true, you don’t want all these at-bats to occur with the bases empty, a very real possibility if Morneau follows the likes of Matt Tolbert and Nick Punto.

Even I can’t embrace the full statistical majesty of the Baseball Prospectus lineup, for I’ve seen too much evidence of innings that work because of the structure of the hitting sequence.

But the Baseball Prospectus theory is certainly going to be proven on a day when everyone hits and hits. Everyone in the lineup had six plate appearances, plenty of time to get some clobbering done, no matter who followed whom.

Only Nick Punto wasted his ample opportunities. He went 0-for-5, but he did have a key sacrifice to get the second inning explosion started.

The Twins did so much power hitting that their 20 runs required just 20 hits. The air and breeze were so perfect, the opposition pitching so tasty, that Matt Tolbert got his first home run in the form of a three-run blast.

Michael Cuddyer had another three-run dinger, and Joe Crede settled for a solo shot.

Nick Blackburn had the good fortune to be surrounded by all this hitting, and he also had a fine game of his own. He gave up four measly hits over seven innings and struck out two. Note: that lifting wind to left was blowing when the Sox were at the plate, too.

Jose Mijares pitched an acceptable eighth: He lost the shutout by giving up an RBI single to Carlos Quentin but kept the Sox from nibbling further.

In the ninth, Joe Nathan made another appearance in a non-save situation, and I’ve seen some angry fan chat about Gardy’s penchant for running him out without the game on the line.

I presume these complaints come from fantasy owners who are giving up a precious relief appearance without any points.

I’m not sure it’s helpful to Nathan. All I know is that he hasn’t looked indomitable this year, and if he needs some work to get there, give him the work. Today, with no pressure whatsoever, he gave up two singles to two of the Sox’s weakest hitters.

Is Nathan a thrill seeker or just rusty? Or, more frightening still, is our ace closer floating back down to earth?

Bartolo Colon started for the White Sox, but was chased to the dugout in the second. It’s hard to know from TV and harder still from radio, but I think this was more a case of the Twins having great offensive strength than it was Colon being especially defensively weak.

You do need the two to tango, but the three relievers Ozzie Guillen tried as the game wore on fared no better.

Because of an error on Punto’s sacrifice, Colon walked away from this train wreck with only one earned run, though he gave up seven. Lance Broadway was tagged for seven, and Jimmy Gobble gave up five runs.

DJ Carrasco had the serene job of cleaning up from the seventh inning on. He only gave up one run, as the Twins settled down and agreed it was time to stop making the hometown crowd watch such a drubbing.

I listened to the White Sox broadcast of the game, and the announcers did their best to entertain their audience, but it wasn’t easy. When describing the positioning of the outfield late in the game, they observed that the Sox were sluggish out there. I imagined them shuffling, back on their heels, barely ready to make the effort to get the outs.

After the seven-run second, the radio broadcaster noted that now the Sox knew how the Twins felt last night.

Precisely, though I don’t wish it on anyone. Today was such a shower of scoring that it seemed surreal. It was so effortless that it didn’t feel like some grand baseball balance was being re-established, that today made up for yesterday.

From a statistical point of view, today’s outburst was the inevitable mathematical polishing of the numbers. But it didn’t feel as if today’s experience was on any kind of continuum with the sorrows of the last six games

If averages are made up of such wild highs and excruciating lows, the averages don’t describe the game at all.

Grading the MinnesotaTwins Infield

Alex Brown — Mon, 18 May 2009 00:17:11 -0400

We’re just under a quarter of the way through the season, and I’m assessing the team player by player. Today’s subject is the infield.

The season began with Joe Mauer on the DL, and that’s a big void in the lineup. But bigger still was the absence of production from the RH hitters who were needed to get on base for the boppers, or do some bopping themselves. The cold start of the team overall may well have had something to do with Mauer’s absence.

A classic Twins inning from last season included a few singles or walks, with RBI production from the hitters to follow. Mauer had a chameleon role here—he could start off the single or walk fest himself, or produce the double that drove in a run. His power game was nearly an afterthought, while his average was a thing of beauty.

Without Mauer to start or finish these scoring drives, it seems very few of them got started in April. Mauer’s return has not rekindled last season’s pattern, however.

His first at-bat after coming off the DL was a home run, and he hasn’t really stopped. He’s on pace for a fat 50 dingers after missing 24 games, homering about every ninth at-bat, a rate we can’t expect him to maintain. This is un-Mauer-like, but hugely welcome in the Twins’ lo-cal lineup.

He’s not just hitting homers, he’s hitting period. His average rests at .423, with a great .827 SLG and a fine .524 OBP. An elite catcher when he just hit for average, now he has stats you look for in first basemen.

His hot streak is still going after a little over two weeks. Remember, he missed all of spring training with serious back issues, yet somehow got his swing ready for what could be a career year. But if he does drop back to earth, his norms are still good enough to have won him two AL batting titles (2006 and 2008).

His newfound power doesn’t seem to be hurting his overall approach at the plate, but his strikeouts bear watching. He’s getting twice as many walks as Ks right now, but his full season strikeout rate projects to 69 Ks, well above the 50 or so he normally notches.

Mauer at this moment is arguably the best catcher in baseball. Gardenhire has several ways to keep him fresh by giving him a DH rest day or cycling him out of the lineup against any especially fearsome lefty. Fantasy owners who salted him away until his late start must be glowing, and should keep him active every day.

The backup catching corps was tested all April, and veteran Mike Redmond and youngster Jose Morales performed better than might be expected. Both of them hit as well or better as the many quiet bats in the lineup.

Jose Morales was initially sent to the minors on Mauer’s return, and it had to be a tough call for Gardenhire to choose his spare catcher. Because Delmon Young is on a brief DL stint, Morales is active now but this won’t last.

Morales will probably be heard from again in September. He hit .333 in the 20 games he played, and his .385 OBP also eclipses Redmond’s. He’s got a rookie’s telltale susceptibility to strikeouts, but he stands a good chance of developing well for the Twins.

He gets extra credit for catching RA Dickey in the knuckleballer’s only start this season and acquitting himself well with one of those dishpan-size gloves.

He might not be Mauer, but Mike Redmond’s infectious enthusiasm can sometimes keep rallies going, and his .255 average and .327 OBP are respectable for a catcher.

The Twins have a true extreme here. Redmond is the vet who keeps the clubhouse loose and can coax a hit or two by sheer savvy but whose offensive contributions will dwindle a bit more each year. Morales may well be a genuine prospect, who may be able to master a few positions and hit with real authority. When do you tilt from the past to the future?

Justin Morneau has been magnificent this year. I recall slow starts from him, but he began 2009 like an MVP. Morneau has been consistently excellent each week, each series, and virtually each game. It’s hard to pin an 0-fer on him, and he’s prepared to contribute to each game.

After his recent tear in Yankee Stadium, he happens to be on pace for double his typical home run production: 52 should he clock in for all 162 games. Speaking of which, he rarely misses a day and is the picture of health and endurance. Last season, I think Gardy resorted to DHing him about twice. A rock who hits for power.

And for RBI. Because the Twins like to plant a few runners for Morneau, he’s logged over 100 RBI for the last three years. The only impediment this year might be Mauer’s homer-happy hitting, which clears the bases.

Morneau truly has few weaknesses. He started strong and is still getting better, going from an April .318 average to .333 in May. He’s actually hitting lefties better than righties—a 1.124 OPS against southpaws versus .997. He

has good strike zone judgment, is willing and able to produce sac flies as well as stinging line drives and the aforesaid homers, and he plays first like a picking machine.

The Twins have the middle infield set on Shuffle Play. Brendan Harris, Matt Tolbert, and Nick Punto can all appear at second or short.

Alexi Casilla, so promising last year, has been sent down to the minors to try to cure an egregious case of poor offense. It got bad enough to affect his defense, and he’ll either reemerge in a month or disappear for the season.

Brendan Harris was Gardy’s second choice for second base, but with Casilla’s ultra-disappointing start, Harris is getting the majority of starts. His current average is a respectable .271, but look elsewhere for power.

Harris has the basic skills necessary if we can get last year’s piranha hitting attack underway again, but so far our fish are merely nibbling.

Matt Tolbert is a light-hitting infielder. He plays his position very well, but is currently hitting below the Mendoza line. He’s a backup second baseman who knows how to play the Twins way.

Nick Punto is, as I understand it, a favorite of Gardenhire’s and I can see why. He has hustle and commitment, and sound baseball understanding of baserunning, fielding, and situational hitting.

Of course the missing piece is hitting, and it’s really missing. This season he’s had a few serious droughts at the plate, and just snapped an 0 for 17 streak. Sorry to say that may only mean he’s about to begin his next hitless streak.

Punto is a team sparkplug, and his defensive skills help solidify the infield. He can play second or third, and puts his heart and soul into every game. You can see why he contributes to the team, but don’t make the mistake of letting him appear in a fantasy lineup. He’s hitting .200 with 18 mortifying strikeouts.

The Twins are widely criticized for letting shortstop Jason Bartlett go to the Rays in 2008, along with Matt Garza, in the trade for Delmon Young and Harris. Punto is by no means an equivalent shortstop, though I don’t think the Twins ever thought he was.

They hoped to acquire some genuine power in Young, after spending so many years with league bottom power stats. Young didn’t match his hype, but that trade didn’t go astray because the Twins thought they no longer needed a good shortstop; they just thought they needed a masher much more.

Joe Crede, acquired from the White Sox in February, fills a third base hole that has troubled the Twins for many seasons. The knock on Crede is his pesky back, which has him out of the lineup right now.

He’s a solid hitter, and is still basking in his walkoff grand slam heroics of last week. He projects to 30 homers, but he’s unlikely to appear in over 100 games, so I suspect he’ll total no more than 20.

If the Twins get their incremental hitting attack going, he’s positioned to collect more than the 55 RBIs than he got with the Sox last year. He’s still likely to strike out more than he walks and sports a so-so .296 OBP, but for the Twins he’s an upgrade.

Reviewing the Minnesota Twins' Outfield

Alex Brown — Sat, 16 May 2009 23:54:23 -0400

Denard Span has consistently exceeded expectations this season. True, expectations might have been a bit low. After all, he lost out on the starting center field job to Carlos Gomez last year, and snuck into the lineup playing right field only when Cuddyer was injured. But the proof is here: Span belongs in the outfield and in the lineup.

As a leadoff man, he has a decent .385 OBP and is 6-for-8 in stolen base attempts. These aren’t amazing stats, but watching him work each at-bat, I expect steady improvement through the season.

Span has great concentration at the plate and is ready to match wits with any pitcher. He is still prone to strikeouts—20 so far, on pace for 90 in a full season. But he’s also good at working walks; he’s collected nearly as many as Ks.

Span has patience at the plate, which pitchers exploit to strike him out looking. He doesn’t strike out with big swings nearly as often. A little more experience and his average and OBP will climb.

Michael Cuddyer started the season very slow, but came to life two weeks ago, in the Cleveland series. He may be cooling off again, but it’s just as likely that he is working into the groove of the long season. At his best, there is some feast or famine in his hitting approach, and his career .268 average isn’t concealing a hidden gem.

Cuddyer is an excellent right fielder whose range always impresses me. When he tunes his hitting toward contact, RBIs, and getting on base, he’s a useful tool in the Twins typical bit-by-bit innings. When he tries to shoulder the weight on his own, innings can fizzle.

For some reason, Gardy doesn’t believe Cuddyer is fully ready to be part of a left-right-left sequence in the lineup. The manager is more likely to know than I am, but I think Cuddyer’s biggest value to the team will be sitting between Morneau and Kubel to give opposing managers more trouble with pitcher choices.

Delmon Young is still a project. He’s a true liability in the outfield, and doesn’t seem to be improving his fielding. He has potential, particularly for power, but in two seasons we haven’t even seen a sustained hot streak.

It’s been small glimpses, game by game, of the upside of the hitter the Twins acquired while giving up Jason Bartlett and Matt Garza. Ask yourself: If the Rays were willing to trade him at 22, is that upside really still there?

Judged against what we lost—a shortstop who can hit and field and helped spark the Rays into the World Series, and a pitcher who’s a ferocious stud (and still a problematic clubhouse brute)—Young doesn’t look like a treasure. His cold start was nearly freezing: he hit .241 in April, but is now coming around, and has nudged the average up to .277.

He’s supposed to have speed, but he hasn’t combined it with good judgment, as he’s been thrown out in his two steal attempts. He’s supposed to have power, but hasn’t engaged it, having hit one home run and one double to date. He’s striking out on a pace for 100 Ks this season, and can ground into double plays with the best of them.

Young is young, only 24. If he’s going to bloom, perhaps he needs to be somewhere else in the lineup, though I don’t see a better spot than seventh or eighth, where Gardy parks him now.

Despite the constant assessment of players as possessors of “tools,” Young’s mean nearly nothing with his current approach to the game. The Twins have had a season to turn that around and the progress doesn’t look great.

Carlos Gomez will always be best defined by his own quote as a rookie last year. He’s a speedster, a lively presence in the clubhouse, and an acrobat in the field. He’s aware of these attributes, and told a reporter, “Everybody loves a player like me.”

And it’s true. He’s impossible not to like, with his boingo grin, impulsive swings, and gravity-defying grabs in center field. He can’t hit a lick, but he’s been trying to compensate with bunting artistry.

Last season, he sparked a few rallies this way, but also committed the cardinal sin of forgetting the count and trying to bunt with two strikes. He’s been asked to dial it back this year, and is less slap happy with these infield dribblers, but bunting still remains his strong suit.

It’s an awfully lightweight strong suit, then. Gomez is hitting .207 right now, with a disastrous .277 OBP. Maybe we can forgive the woeful .310 SLG mark, but the other numbers make putting him in the starting lineup a big puzzler for Gardenhire.

Lately he’s been solving it with Young in left, Span in center, Cuddyer in right, and Gomez cheerleading on the bench.

He’s indefatigable in that role, and when he’s in as a defensive replacement, he can make catches like the one last week against the Tigers: A leap past leaping, a fall and roll with arms stretched out straight, and a proud display of the glove wrapped tight around the ball. Everybody loves a player like you.

Gomez is fast, and already has one triple. But his base stealing is proving the running game naysayers correct: he’s been caught out on all three attempts so far.

Last season these mistakes could be dismissed as rookie recklessness, but now they’re a point of concern. He may have too much confidence in his own formidable speed, and too little respect for the abilities of catchers and pitchers to outwit baserunners.

This aspect of his game can and should improve. If it doesn’t, he’ll be a great fielder never became a major league hitter.

Jason Kubel has a much more clearly defined role this season. Gardenhire is using him as DH almost every night, and starting him against left-handers, while last season he was a pure platoon man.

Now, that chance to start against lefties had a lot to do with Mauer missing the start of the season, but Kubel has done enough to prove himself that the bench-warming days may be confined to times when Mauer gets to take off the catching gear and DH.

Still, fantasy fiends may want to be careful. Minnesota has two odd lineup problems—a glut of outfielders and an ever bigger glut of lefty hitters. Kubel hasn’t been used in the outfield often, and when his DH slot is occupied by Mauer or Morneau on their fielding days off, Kubel can ride the pine. Today, however, he started in left against the Yankees.

The typical current batting order is Span (L), Harris (R), Mauer (L), Morneau (L), Kubel (L), Cuddyer (R), Crede (R), Young (R), and Punto (S).

On paper, there’s great vulnerability to specialist pitching matchups in the late innings. In practice, Morneau and Kubel have both shown strength against lefties, and Mauer is such a high average hitter that handedness can’t stop him.

So Kubel stays, even in an unconventional sequence. All his numbers are up from last year, and the settled role may be the reason why. I’d even consider the idea that he took up the burden of Mauer’s month-long absence and put the team on his shoulders.

Kubel isn’t a total power stud, and will probably crack 25 homers at best, but he’s having the best season of his career so far.

If you’re looking for fantasy players, settle on Span and Kubel. Young and Gomez are still works in progress, and Cuddyer is pretty pedestrian at the plate.

Yankees 5 Twins 4: Comeback Versus Joe Nathan

Alex Brown — Sat, 16 May 2009 01:45:01 -0400

The Twins make their first visit to the new Yankee Stadium for a four-game series. The Yankees have many weapons, but they are unsurpassed in intimidation by pure historical prominence. That’s why any trip to the Bronx comes complete with shock and awe.

The new stadium is supposed carry on the tradition of making opponents more or less wet their pants. But the new palace isn’t having the desired effect.

There is, first of all, the matter of the not-so-great Yankee team taking the field. As they prepare to face the Twins, they’re 17-17, and 6-7 at home, on a five-game losing streak.

When the Yankees lose, the salary chart is always whipped out so we can be aghast at the price of failure. The payroll is over $201 million—even the Dodgers make do with half that. The Twins, I am proud to say, have essentially the same win-loss record and division rank (third) and are making do on $65 million.

Then there is the complementary home run on check-in. Instead of being distracted by the lovely white arches that ring the stadium like lace, hitters are lofting homers at a prodigious rate. What’s worse, many sail to right by the skimpy, budget-size Utz Potato Chips sign, a sad reminder that a regional snack company can no longer afford the mighty billboard that matched up with Budweiser’s in right center. I miss you, Utz Girl.

So we’re back to money, because the empty seats in the new stadium have got to be soul-crushing to Joe Girardi & Co. Economic trajectories may once have made it realistic to ask New York’s large millionaire population to pay $1250 to watch a single game of baseball, but even if it were a solid foundation for team revenue, it’s just embarrassing.

The greatest shoestring catch, the clutchiest home run, even the one true perfect game—none of them should cost that much to witness.

So the Twins begin the day on the happy note of sweeping the Tigers and curious about their potential for using the home run ball against their hosts. We send up Francisco Liriano; the Yanks start Phil Hughes.

In the second inning, Justin Morneau deposits a solo homer to the Utz zone in right, scoring first, scoring firmly. Morneau’s swing is so tailor-made for the home run magnet in this stadium that it’s almost an obligatory pop, like kissing the Blarney Stone.

To this one-run lead we cling a while, later adding another run in the fourth and run number three in the fifth, via a second solo homer from Morneau. The Yankees finally make a real peep in the fifth, with a solo homer from Derek Jeter.

Joe Mauer punches his home run card with a solo shot in the seventh. This hit does not appear to have any special Yankee Stadium wind current to assist it, for it’s planted deep to center, the kind of wallop that would be a homer anywhere. Mauer’s power surge continues.

It’s now 4-1 Twins in the seventh. Jesse Crain has replaced Liriano, and the Yankees provide some genuine excitement.

With two out, Brett Gardner collects two strikes and then shoots a ball to left. It bends further left and drops in a different spot than Denard Span had planned to meet it. Span had already made a great nailed-ya throw tonight, but this ball skids and clatters by the outfield wall while Gardner just keeps running.

And running. And running all the way home. Span’s throw is close, but Gardner is certainly safe. The inside-the-park homer isn’t supposed to be necessary in this new Yankee Stadium, but here it is. It’s textbook exhilarating, and Gardner joins the happy group of players whose feat matches beating the dealer standing on 20.

This scoring, however, is not the only interesting part of the evening. The real story is how each team manages to go nine innings through a minefield of walks.

Liriano alone issues six of them, and not one comes in to score. Baseball is notorious for paying back pitchers who issue walks. The most robust double, the canniest single, even the zippy triple don’t seem to take the revenge that walks do.

But tonight the Yankees hand out seven and the Twins do all their scoring on three solo homers and a double plus sac fly to cash in a single by Jason Kubel.

The Yankees collect ten walks, and Liriano tiptoes around all of his. Crain and Jose Mijares are also able to let the runners they walk wilt on the bases. But Joe Nathan is not as fortunate.

In the ninth, up 4-2, Nathan comes in for his seventh save opportunity. He has blown one chance and appeared in non-save situations without his full powers—there may be kryptonite out there somewhere. Nathan is good, but he is not a sure thing this season.

Gardner leads off, still jazzed by his inside-the-park job. Gardner is only in the game because Johnny Damon was ejected for arguing a strikeout call, so he has a late start. But so far he’s singled and homered. Nathan fails to fool him: he pounds a triple.

The Yankees have many incentives to win this game, but Gardner could be excused for hoping for a tie. With one more at-bat, he could collect the double and hit for the cycle.

Gardner doesn’t have much time to daydream of such things on third base. Mark Teixeira singles to score him, and Nathan is awash in closer’s adrenaline. He has a one-run lead left, and Rodriguez is up.

This is A-Rod’s first game at home after starting the season with hip surgery. There have been cheers tonight, but also boos. A-Rod has struck out with the bases loaded (there were walks involved) and collected two walks himself. In all other respects, his massive paycheck tonight has purchased flexing in the on-deck circle.

He has something to prove, and Nathan’s attempts to foil him require the use of pitches outside the strike zone. Rodriguez walks, scooting Teixeira on to second base.

Nathan strikes out Hideki Matsui, then gets Nick Swisher to ground out but not without advancing the runners. With first open, Robinson Cano gets an intentional walk, bringing the Twins’ free pass tally up to ten. Not one of them has scored.

So far. Melky Cabrera hits Nathan’s first pitch to a handy void in left. Fielders do not converge on it in time. It’s a hit, scoring two, and the Yankees have their first lead of the night in the form of a win.

Only one walk actually scores for either team, but it’s part of a game-winning pair. The Yankees, on the ropes all game long, pull off the surprise win. The minefield of walks only explodes on Nathan, but it does go boom.

Verlander Gem Blown as Minnesota Twins Sweep Detroit Tigers

Alex Brown — Fri, 15 May 2009 00:17:16 -0400

It isn’t fair, but it is baseball. Justin Verlander pitched a gem for the Tigers this afternoon, but he didn’t get the win. He threw a career-high 13 strikeouts, and he sent the Twins down in weary rows, but he didn’t get the win.

Now, that’s largely because pitchers can only create conditions in which a win is possible; they can’t secure it. Wins make a crisp, intense stat, but they don’t illuminate a pitcher’s skill. A team wins or loses.

Verlander didn’t get a win, but neither did Scott Baker, who had yet another outing with one bad inning in it. This one was grievous, but let’s pause for a moment to consider the other five he pitched.

The game was scoreless until the sixth. I don’t mean scoreless like no one has gotten around to it, but scoreless as in this is an impossible goal. Both pitchers faced close to the minimum batters. Verlander tended to mow his down with Ks, while Baker courted fly outs, to foul or fair territory, but in both cases, the hitters were stone silent.

I had only the radio to guide me through the game this afternoon, so I’m limited to the cerebral, aerial view. That means I can gloss over Baker’s troubled sixth. The Tigers batted around, and between Brandon Inge’s lead off single to his strikeout to end the inning, five runs were scored.

Baker has the stuff but he seems to write singles and not albums. A full game, in which the pitcher must balance highs and lows, just seems out of reach. He kept the Mariners quiet for his first win last Friday, but that’s the only time a bad inning hasn’t bollixed Baker.

There’s every reason to hope he’ll overcome this, but the pattern is getting hard to ignore.

Down 5-0, the Twins could have let the game go. After all, they had just finished a marathon about 12 hours before. Instead, they let Verlander slice and dice them for sixth innings and then start the seventh with his pitch count showing. Thirteen strikeouts will cost you in the pitch department.

Verlander fanned Joe Crede to start the seventh, but then allowed a single and a walk. It’s not as if he’s crumbling to the ground, but he’s well past the typical pitch allowance so Jim Leyland brought in Bobby Seay to handle Denard Span.

Span singled to load the bases. If you’re a Detroit fan, you can still see rays of light. They need eight more outs with a five-run cushion. Maybe they could part with a run or two here and just tidy up later.

Seay did the single ugliest thing he can do: he walked in a run as Matt Tolbert refused to nibble on stuff out of the strike zone. Joe Mauer hit into a fielder’s choice, scoring one run, and the Twins created a pretty throbbing nightmare for Seay.

Justin Morneau rapped out a single, and batter by batter we’re tapping in runs. When Jason Kubel launched one to the center field fence, the Twins radio announcer was saddened to see it classified a ground-rule double. Only one run can score on it, but the Twins are now down by a single run, 4-5.

Leyland switched pitchers, but the spell isn’t broken. Zach Miner walked Michael Cuddyer and Joe Crede, last night’s walkoff grand slam hero, was up.

The time all he had to produce is a single, but it scores two and the Twins, of all things, have the lead 6-5.

And that’s the game. Six good innings by Verlander, and one horrific one he starts and the bullpen finishes. Five good innings by Baker, and one disastrous one. No other scoring, very little other hitting.

The radio is sometimes a great window into a game, but it can be hard to put a pitcher’s duel into words. The majority of the game was pitching excellence, which takes the form of hitting silence. How do you describe a void?

But what did feel clear all along was that the Tigers had Verlander at his peak on the mound. A sweep of the Tigers would be asking too much, particularly after last night’s comeback.

Winning wasn’t possible, and then it was. The Twins are starting to show the grit and game-long concentration it takes to win a series, sweep a series, and perhaps win a division. That’s a long way off, since this victory brings the team a mere whisker above .500, but the ingredients of winning baseball are starting to show.

This is the first series sweep of the year, and it’s against a division heavy. Since we’ve spent the whole season so far below or near .500, we can’t start reading turnaround in our tea leaves, but these three wins have all shown some new strengths in the bullpen and the power game.

We get to test them over the weekend against the Yankees, and in that new ballpark, the one that seems to make the homers bloom to right. Well, of all things, we may have a lineup ready to capitalize.

Joe Crede Powers Minnesota Twins Win with Walkoff Grand Slam

Alex Brown — Fri, 15 May 2009 00:07:52 -0400

Wednesday’s Twins-Tigers game very nearly included everything. There were, after all, about five hours of baseball involved, so that left time for an interlude of great pitching (followed by a bit of a collapse), an audition for a faded star to return to the lineup, a manager ejection, a surprise last-legs tie, a deadly balk, and a grand finale in which the word “grand” modifies slam.

Act One: pitchers at work. The Tigers handed the ball to Dontrelle Willis, whose rise and fall have been equally precipitous. Last year, Willis was the cherry on top of the massive Miguel Cabrera trade, potentially giving Detroit an unstoppable rotation. Lots fell apart last year for the Tigers, including every aspect of Willis’ control.

In his first start of 2009, after time on the DL with an anxiety disorder, Willis seemed happy to be back on the mound, and managed reasonably well for almost five innings.

True, he gave up a two-run homer to Justin Morneau in the first, but the pure wildness of last year was gone. So, too, was the cartoon-grade high leg kick, which is now a kinder, gentler push off.

You would not rush to claim Willis off the waiver wire based on tonight’s performance, but neither would you doubt he might have some value in a five-man rotation for the Tigers. He gave up four runs but appeared to be happily chatting with himself on the mound, the personification of “just glad to be here.”

Glen Perkins started for the Twins and for three innings was Mr Efficiency. He got nine outs on 24 pitches, taking advantage of the Tigers’ collective zeal for impulsive swings. But give Perkins credit for fooling them so well. His control was great, and he and catcher Joe Mauer had a sharp approach to each hitter.

Comes the fourth inning and suddenly he’s pitching in a different game. First, all the Detroit hitters seem to have had a little a-ha moment, and are now studying pitches like they contain the secret of the universe.

Second, home plate umpire Paul Schrieber has become distinctly erratic in his ball and strike calls. Neither pitcher has been enjoying the roulette quality of the umpiring, but now Perkins has lost the key to satisfying Schrieber. After walking two, Perkins stops merely doubting Schrieber and plays along by losing the strike zone.

What is control? Willis used to have it but has spent the last three seasons heading downhill. He may never have another stellar game, and may be fighting for control every time.

Perkins has had interludes in every game in which he pitches with great clarity of purpose and control. But tonight he issued three walks in the fourth, and a single from Adam Everett scored two.

What Perkins had to start the game has disappeared. He stares moodily at the umpire, and Mauer trots up for a steadying chat, but it appears that after failing to get some strike calls, Perkins has unraveled.

Control is a property squarely in between physical prowess and psychological confidence. You’ll need both to control a baseball pitch, and the balance is delicate. Perkins lost his for the night; Willis is now experimenting with new methods for pitching with a great deal less on the confidence side.

Act Two: rally duels. Though the starters stayed in, the innings became much less tidy, and both teams trade off scoring. In the top of the fifth, with Twins up 4-2, the Tigers inched closer when Curtis Granderson turned a walk into a chance to score from third on a wild pitch. Perkins’ control issues reached orange alert, and the Tigers were behind by only one run.

In the sixth, Perkins gave up a two-run homer to Brandon Inge, and the pendulum seemed to shift.

When the Twins come to bat, they promptly answered back, collecting three runs that key off a triple from Denard Span. Now the score is 7-5 Twins, but that's not a big lead. And the Twins bullpen is not where you go for safety and comfort these days.

Indeed, in the seventh inning, as Matt Guerrier relieved Ayala, the power-packed Tigers got homers from Cabrera and Jeff Larish. Cabrera’s comes after a walk and a double, so the Tigers are back on top, 9-7.

Act Two, in which both squads keep pounding, had its climax in the eighth. Mike Redmond got one of his unadorned singles to the opposite field and Jason Kubel came to the plate.

Two runs down, the Twins way is generally to keep the train cars moving one by one, but Kubel has a special little love for the long ball, and he crushed one to right. Game tied, and everyone wanted to rub Kubel’s recently buzz-cut head in the dugout.

Act Three: the siege. The tie begins to feel like a permanent détente. There are hits and walks sprinkled in, but neither team can mount an attack.

Manager Ron Gardenhire, as he’s done lately, used up Joe Nathan in the ninth to preserve the tie, and then both teams rattled out their relievers, largely to good effect. Jose Mijares made short work of Detroit in the tenth and eleventh.

Remember our umpiring theme for the night. Schrieber remained unpredictable. It’s hard to second guess from a TV picture, but second guess I will.

The quick pace of the first three innings ground to a funeral march as Schrieber showed a real reluctance to recognize a strike. But with the tie in place, he seemed to grow impatient and enlarged the strike zone.

So much so that when Ordonez is called out on strikes to end the eighth, his verbal complaint was met with the umpire’s gentle but insistent nudge on the back. However he meant it, Ordonez heard Clint Eastwood saying Get off my home plate lawn, and Ordonez was further peeved.

Skipper Jim Leyland yelled sufficiently apoplectically to get thrown out of the game. Players touching umpires is verboten; umpires touching players is presumably the same.

It’s the 13th inning, and you get the feeling that players, fans, coaches, umpires, and broadcast announcers have actually witnessed enough baseball to satisfy them. I stay with it, weary but committed to the siege.

It’s nearly 1:00 am EST, and Jesse Crain gave up a triple to Granderson. Granderson is a remarkable player I always find fun to watch, but if this tie is going to be broken, I’d still rather it be done by a Twin.

No luck. Granderson, by accident or keen baseball intelligence, tried an interesting stunt. He’s at third and made a move as if suddenly breaking for home. Crain is rattled, and he rushed his delivery without coming to the requisite stop. It’s a balk. It’s a balk that breaks a tie. It’s the most despised possible balk in the baseball universe.

The Tigers added nothing more, but Granderson may have single-handedly won the game by pure baseball skill and instinct.

Brandon Lyon started his third relief inning for the Tigers. Kubel led off with a single, and the long hitting silence may finally end. Nick Punto came in to run for Kubel, and Span sacrificed him to second.

Now, as an aside, I want to protest that this technique of giving up outs for bases has much less chance of success than many managers believe. I am stricken when I see Span’s weak infield grounder cut us down to two outs, even if the double play is less likely.

I’m feeling a bit doomed here after seeing Granderson stroll home on that fateful balk.

Matt Tolbert singled to left scored Punto. After sliding into home, Punto sprang up with pure joy, his baseball pants dusty and his pocket torn. He’s only been in for one inning of this marathon, but boy is he loving it. Game re-tied.

Joe Mauer had an uncharacteristically lousy at-bat, culminating in a groundout to Lyon that advanced Tolbert to second. I know, I should take back everything I said about sacrifices since Punto’s ability to tie the game was based on one, but I still feel dreary. In fact, nearly five hours in, I can’t say I’m looking forward to more tied baseball.

With Tolbert on second, the strategy for Morneau was clear cut: intentional walk. Michael Cuddyer got a walk the old-fashioned way, by earning it. The bases were full, but the Tigers are now up to the weakling portion of the Twins lineup.

Joe Crede, who has shown flashes this year, burned his brightest so far: the walkoff grand slam is so exhilarating to watch that I forget what time it is, how many missed opportunities we’ve had, and how dispiriting the siege had been. We’ve made it—outlasted and outblasted the Tigers.

Mariner's-Twins: Blackburn's Pitching Gem Blown by Bullpen

Alex Brown — Sun, 10 May 2009 22:59:23 -0400

Today the Twins went for a sweep, with poor Seattle on a 6-game losing streak. Minnesota has just had two games with bountiful power and good-to-great pitching. All they needed was one more dose of that to lift themselves back up to the .500 perch.

Nick Blackburn started for the Twins. In his last start, against the Tigers on Tuesday, Blackburn had an especially woeful game. None of his problems could be chalked up to luck. He simply wasn’t able to throw strikes, and his fastball was not his friend.

Today Blackburn was fully back in form. He grew bonus beard stubble, too—for a baseball player, he appears to be closing in on the sensitive indie singer-songwriter look. Nevertheless, he scattered five hits through seven serene innings and struck out six, matching his career best. He built a nice shutout to hand off to the bullpen.

Meanwhile, Twins hitters seem to have misplaced that How-To-Clobber-A-Baseball tipsheet they consulted on Friday and Saturday. They kept giving Mariners starter Erik Bedard plenty to worry about by drawing walks, laying down bunts, and hitting the odd single, but Bedard let them inch no further than third base until the third inning.

During that third inning, for the third consecutive time, the Twins led off with a walk. This time, Justin Morneau was able to double in Joe Maurer for a glorious 1-0 lead. No rally, though—this was going to be scratch and peck baseball.

In the fifth, it was Morneau who collected a walk, and then advanced to second on a wild pitch. Michael Cuddyer singled him home, giving the Twins a sturdier 2-0 lead to defend.

Blackburn certainly pitched well enough to deserve a win. In the eighth, Jose Mijares came in for another edition of Dynamo Setup Man, a role he usually fills well. Still, please recall his last appearance, against Baltimore, in which he gave up the go-ahead run and left the Twins with a loss.

On this particular afternoon, he got Ichiro Suzuki to ground out and then we took a ride on the mystery train, for Mijares did the two very things he never (make that rarely) does: he issued a four-pitch walk and gave up a home run. The math is pretty simple, really—the game was tied up.

Fans can, by digging deep, feel good about about the home run. It was Ken Griffey Jr's 614th career home run, on his last visit to the Metrodome. It turns out it’s been his personal Homerdome all this time, as he has the most round-trippers of any visiting player, even after spending all those seasons in the National League.

He hit this one deep and high to right, bouncing off of Subway’s “Hit it Here $25,000” banner. However, the Twins' announcers set the record straight. Subway only pays $25,000 for a Twins hitter to hit it, and the money would go to a fan. See, there’s fine print even on stadium signage.

The Twins still had a tie game on their hands, but Blackburn lost his win, and Mijares was yanked for Jesse Crain, who pitched a clean eighth inning in Friday’s win. But Crain didn't fare as well in this game.

The bases didn't stay empty for long. Adrian Beltre singled, then Russell Branyan followed and we had men on first and third with one out. Crain didn’t wait around for the next single, he simply threw a wild pitch, allowing Beltre score the go-ahead run. Wladimir Balentien hit a deep double to put the Mariners ahead 4-2.

The Twins bullpen let a win leak away again. The hitters had little to show for in their half of the eighth, and the Mariners went for a truly soul-crushing homer by micro-hitter Jose Lopez in the top of the ninth, notched against Craig Breslow. Now we had a three-run mountain to climb.

In the bottom of the ninth, we made it interesting against Mariners closer Brandon Morrow. Morrow had that memorable meltdown in the first series against the Twins in which he walked three batters and lost the game. The M's brought him back for his next opportunity, however, and he was solid in a second chance against the Twins in April.

Today, he was a little of both. He gave up an infield single to Nick Punto leading off. Punto stole second while Denard Span stayed ever-patient in the count, though he eventually grounded out.

Lonely Nicky Punto stood on second while Jason Kubel converted his pinch hit opportunity into a strike out. Now we were down to a final out at-bat. Joe Mauer used his beautifully. With the count 1-2, he poked a single straight through to center and scored Punto. The stolen base and Maurer’s batting eye inched us closer—M's led 5-3.

Morneau was up, with his usual assignment of nudging Maurer to home plate. Morrow had another sudden case of voices in his head—the voices were saying, “Bad Pitcher, Bad!”

Morrow walked Morneau on four pitches.

He walked Cuddyer on four pitches.

The bases were loaded, and if perchance all these runners reached home, Morrow would have turned the game back over to Minnesota. Oh, those voices in his head!

The walks did not appear to be defensive moves, but the truth was Morrow had gotten himself out of the more dangerous part of the batting order. Brendan Harris was up, and though he’s no great threat win it with a homer, such a feat is not beyond him. His principal weapon, however, would be working the count.

Harris is so good at outlasting pitchers that he hadn't seem to notice that Morrow might have lost his edge after walking two batters. Ball one, ball two, and a called strike. Now Harris was intent on fouling off pitches to keep himself at the plate long enough for Morrow to make a mistake. The trouble was, Harris fouled off ball three, then ball four. He is good at matching wits with pitchers, but he gave Morrow too much credit. Aching for contact, Harris grounded out to end the game.

The Mariners uses the victory to get back to .500. The Twins are now at 15-17. As soon as they finish the chapter on winning as many as they lose, they can move on to extra credit: winning the majority of the time.

Most of today’s game was played as if we were in a library—Shush! Maybe a 2-run lead will be enough if we stay quiet! Our batters tiptoed around the Mariners, and our pitcher shushed them in turn. It’s not a very safe way to play baseball—someone is bound to come in and spill a Slushee on your library books if you try to keep it up for nine innings.

The bullpen let the game fall apart, but it happened so suddenly it was a shock. The Orioles performed the same presto-change-o move on us in the eighth inning to win last Thursday. The Twins appear to have constructed a team well-suited for seven-inning games. Well, one more if you can just hop over to Joe Nathan in the ninth. There’s a Star Trek-size black hole in the eighth right now.

Twins Wallop Mariners 11-0: Homers Aplenty and Scott Baker's First Win

Alex Brown — Sat, 09 May 2009 00:33:00 -0400

The Twins unmistakably come to life at the start of a homestand against Seattle. Do you have your checklist ready? Mark Minnesota down as follows:

Early lead. They score two in the first, after granting the opposition nothing more than a hit. Denard Span led off with a hit, and Matt Tolbert moved him along to third with a double. The M&M boys split the RBIs, with Joe Mauer driving in Span and Morneau picking up Tolbert.

Comeback story. Scott Baker gets his first win of the season. You’ll recall that we last left him melting down in the seventh against the Royals. In about 10 minutes, he lost a no-hitter, a shutout, and a win. Tonight he makes it through the seventh with a win pretty well guaranteed by an offensive outburst (see below).

Shutout. The pitching was good, but a shutout requires some cooperation. The Mariners weren’t precisely asleep at the plate, but they didn’t have it going on. It’s also not a fluke: this was the ninth time this season they’ve scored one run or less.

Power hour. The Twins, second to last in all of baseball in home run hitting, try to make up some ground by hitting four of them, including a back to back display in the fifth by Mauer and Morneau, followed by Brian Buscher one batter later.

The most exciting, chiefly for its unlikelihood, is Brendan Harris’ steely three-run job in the second. He works the count and waits for his pitch. Mariners starter Chris Jakubauskas serves it up, and Harris sends it deep to right.

Scoring. The Twins score in four of the eight innings they need to play, and accumulate 11 runs. Not that they round up all their doggies—they can’t cash in every hit. Among the 17 men they leave on base is Jason Kubel, who’s abandoned on second with a double that came within two inches of a being the fifth home run of the night.

Spreading the wealth. Every Twin in the starting lineup scores at least one run and collects at least one hit. Contributions from Tolbert, Buscher, Harris, and Young give hope for a more diversified offensive approach.

Carlos Gomez, who only has two at-bats in a pinch-fielding role, makes a great catch in center. There ought to be a Designated Fielder position to keep someone as fun to watch as Gomez in the game. DF!

Sharp pitching. Baker’s seven innings brought him just past the 100-pitch mark, but he spent the entire game in command. Despite the great hitless string he put together against Kansas City, tonight he had a more intimidating pitching sequence against most batters. He allowed five hits, all of them lightweight little jobs.

Most important, only two of them occurred in the same inning. The sixth began with back–to-back singles, but Baker settled down to secure three outs to silence the Ms. He had five strikeouts and no walks, and he must feel his season has finally begun.

Capable bullpen. Jesse Crain pitched a serene, 1-2-3 eighth inning. Joe Nathan, who has only had five save chances all season, pitched the ninth just to see some live batters for a change.

He got an easy groundout and struck out two. With an 11-run lead, there’s not a lot of intensity, but Joe still fervently shook his head and puffed out his cheeks a time or two in his signature signal that he’s taking all this very seriously and what he’s about to pitch now will take everything he’s got. I love that headshake.

This game required no deep strategy, miracle catch, or clutch hit. It was vigorous baseball right out of the bag—heat in the microwave and eat. If the game itself was nothing but a steady stream of easy runs, the victory was the end of a three-game losing streak and a chance to forget about that nasty road trip to Detroit and Baltimore. Turn the page.

Tigers Blank Twins 9-0: Everything and Nothing

Alex Brown — Wed, 06 May 2009 00:01:44 -0400

Tonight at Comerica Park, the Tigers pitch great and hit well. The Twins do precisely the opposite. Baseball, like one team wants it to be.

Games like these are necessary from time to time—for both teams. The Tigers must feel energized by their 9-0 in-your-face victory, which featured seven great innings from Porcello and a big bouquet of hits from Jim Leyland’s reshuffled lineup.

For the Twins, a loss like this is a chance to practice pulling your head into your shell. Just cover your eyes and maybe it will all go away.

For the first two innings, it seemed Nick Punto did all our fielding. Our successful fielding, that is. He ended the first inning with a great twisteroo grab and throw to first that saved a run, limiting the Tigers to a 1-0 lead.

In the second, Punto snared an easy ground out. But the rest of the team seemed dead set on filming their blooper reel. Here’s how the Tigers coasted to score five runs and go up 6-1.

Magglio Ordonez and Brandon Inge are both quick ground ball outs. They end up the only two Tigers who don’t crowd the box score with hits or walks. So it would seem Blackburn has settled down after a troubled first inning, two outs. How dangerous can that be?

Blackburn walks Gerald Laird, on four pitches. Laird is a respectable catcher but by no means fearsome presence at the plate. Shortstop Ramon Santiago doubles to right, scoring Laird—and it took an el grande double to get the slow-motoring Laird home.

Josh Anderson hits a saggy line drive to left, where Delmon Young has to decide between charging hard to dive for it and hanging back to play the hop. Well, wrong choice.

I fear Young doesn’t have the diving gene, because I never see him throwing himself after anything out there. Today’s mincing glove stab deflects the ball. The official scorer gives Anderson a single and Young an error, allowing Anderson on to second. The main consequence is another run scored.

The new batter, Placido Polanco, solicits the Twin’s next error. He hits a hot shot to right, where Michael Cuddyer has some scampering to do to grab it, spin, and throw to the cutoff man, Alexi Casilla.

Casilla seems to want to check his notes on which base might be most deserving of a throw. After further review, he selects...none of them. Polanco’s safe at first, and Anderson is on third.

The stage is set for Clete Thomas, who had his season debut in the first with a double. Leyland has given him the start in right field and the third spot in the batting order, and Thomas is happy to receive these treasures. He triples to right and scores Anderson and Polanco.

The Detroit fans who stuck around after the Tigers have run up the score to 9-0 are largely waiting to see if Thomas manages to hit for the cycle in his first game of 2009. He does secure the double and rocks himself back on his heels with several attempts at that elusive homer, but must be satisfied with a 3-4 night, two RBIs, and a walk.

Now Miguel Cabrera is up, and all it takes is a single to send Thomas in from third. After the two quick outs, Blackburn has spent the entire inning under assault. He’s still reeling when he faces Curtis Granderson.

His first two pitches are balls, and Twins broadcaster Dick Bremer notes that Blackburn can’t locate his fastball and has been forced to turn to breaking stuff in pursuit of strikes. Against Granderson, the tide finally turns, and Morneau fields an easy ground out.

Now, you can’t really write descriptively about nothing. The Twins trudge on through the game, turning in their outs. Porcello has the high excitement of allowing a hit in the second and fifth (in both cases promptly solved with a double play) and issuing a walk in the third, but otherwise glides through seven innings.

Every young pitcher should have a great confidence-building game, and Porcello has the Twins to thank for his.

He starts the seventh and allows a lead off hit, the biggest dilemma he’s made for himself all night. Another double play, another problem solved. But wait, a walk. A single by Jason Kubel, and finally, Porcello can have a cathartic scare. He walks Joe Crede to load the bases. But when a team has nuthin’, nothing happens—Cuddyer grounds out to end the inning.

The Tigers’ bullpen now features former starter Nate Roberston, who repeats the bases-loaded fire drill in the eighth. As fervid a fan as I am, I can assure you that at no time in the seventh or eighth did I actually feel a shiver of hope. Bases loaded by a team with nuthin’? Nothing happens. Robertson keeps the shutout shut tight.

Blackburn is pulled in the fourth, almost mysteriously inept. His last two starts had been excellent, and whatever troubled him tonight was a fog that wasn’t going to lift. He had, sad to say, nuthin’.

The hitters produce a grand total of five hits, three of them by Jason Kubel, who didn’t get on the nuthin’ bus. The others were by Alexi Casilla, badly in need of repairing a .167 batting average, and Cuddyer, who does not let this lousy night at the park get in the way of his hitting renaissance.

These hits constitute our complete list of accomplishments. The hopeful (or blind, or idiotic) fan wants to see it all as getting something out of the team’s system.

After spreading 10 errors over the previous 26 games, the Twins commit three tonight (add Crede’s lead glove glitch in the third to those mentioned earlier). At no time were we in true danger of scoring a run. Our starter never got started, giving up eight hits, three walks, and nine runs, six of them earned around those errors.

It was kind of the opposite of baseball. It was, nuthin’.

Minnesota-Detroit: Safety Squeeze Fails; Twins 7, Tigers 2

Alex Brown — Tue, 05 May 2009 00:04:02 -0400

Michael Cuddyer has used the last three games to show us his "after" picture. Gone are the mechanical glitches or bad batting eye judgments. He's hitting a ton. There was a homer yesterday and a two-run triple against Detroit tonight. His rejuvenation looks complete.

He had a fine night, going two for three with a walk, but I want to look at just one play from tonight's game, a squeeze play featuring Cuddyer.

It's a safety squeeze, not a suicide squeeze, and tonight it was the wrong choice.

The suicide squeeze is as do-or-die as the name suggests, but the truth is, it’s a pretty high percentage play. Batter and runner must have their skills in hand, but there’s little the defense can do to foil them. If it doesn’t work, the players have only themselves to blame.

The ingredients are: a man on third, a batter capable of bunting, and less than two outs. It’s a plain squeeze play if the batter bunts and the runner sizes things up and heads for home. To qualify as a suicide squeeze, the runner takes off as the pitcher releases the ball.

Therein lies the risk. Leaving early means that even a shoddy bunt will probably still be enough, as the runner has such a good head start. But if the batter fails to make contact or misses the sign that the play is on, the runner is, as we say of chickens, broasted.

A high percentage play, but risks remain. The bunt doesn’t have to make the hall of fame, but it does have to rattle about long enough to get that runner home. And the dreaded popup will disgrace the batter and end the inning with a double play.

Speaking of which, outs have an effect on the suicide squeeze. You generally wouldn’t try it with no outs since the odds of scoring the runner on third with conventional hitting are higher. And it’s out of the question with two outs, as the batter is safe only under unusual circumstances.

This means the defense has an easy time figuring out it’s coming, but still can’t do much about it. It’s tough to pitch a ball that a batter can’t bunt—bunting failures all lie with the batter’s own reflexes and aptitude.

Aside from guessing right and pitching out, there’s little the infielders can do about the squeeze even if they know it’s coming. The defense is reduced to scrabbling for the rolling bunt and making the best decision about throwing home or accepting the sacrifice and nailing the batter at first.

I have never seen it happen, but research reveals that a pitcher can do one thing to negate the scheme. If the runner breaks so soon that the pitcher sees the play is on, he might have the presence of mind to intentionally hit the batter. That makes it a dead ball which returns the runner to third. Now, baseball is rich in tradeoffs—there are sacrifices, defensive shifts, and pitchouts in which one side gives up something in hopes that something worse is averted. But hitting a batter to avoid a squeeze? It sounds like a mere academic possibility.

Tonight, the Twins have Michael Cuddyer on third and Nick Punto at the plate. If Jim Leyland, the Detroit skipper, has even glanced at Punto’s stats, he’ll know that Punto is made for squeeze bunting, not least because he isn’t made for many other hitting categories. The Twins have no outs, so they’re letting Punto’s buntability outweigh the conventional big inning. The only question is which pitch, and whether to send Cuddyer in suicide mode or not.

Punto’s bunt is decent, but Cuddyer is held until contact. The Tigers first baseman Miguel Cabrera has enough time to field the ball and wing it home, where sturdy Gerald Laird is planted to receive the ball before he receives the runner. Cuddyer slams into him, but the ball stays in the glove. Punto’s on first with the worst consolation prize; Cuddyer is out.

What’s special tonight is the failure of the play. The suicide squeeze would almost certainly have worked. I only got one replay to watch the thing fall apart, and the camera never showed me Cuddyer’s jump off third. I draw my conclusion not from direct evidence but from the percentages on the play.

The outcome, in this particular game, is that sacrificing Cuddyer for Punto didn’t end the Twins’ scoring program. Alexi Casilla would drive Punto in, along with Delmon Young on base after being hit by a pitch. The Twins score 5 runs in the inning.

Francisco Liriano got his first win of the year, and his route there was direct: pitch well, get run support. The Twins scored so little in Liriano’s previous four starts that he should not be carrying the burden of a 1-4 record all by himself.

Facing Edwin Jackson, the Twins score 1 run in the second and seem about to make their usual meager offering on behalf of Liriano. But in the seventh inning they come alive with five runs, and then tack on another in the ninth.

Liriano gives up a solo homer to Cabrera, and Matt Guerrier in relief allows a sacrifice RBI to Magglio Ordonez. That wraps up the Tigers’ assault. And a strong 7-2 win sets up the Twins for the final game of two in Detroit.