April 2006 Archives

Inter-division games are the most important games you can play. The Twins have now played a series against every time in the Central Division. Here's how they've gone.

The score tells the story of this game. It was bad, really bad.

This was an ugly game all around for the Twins. Brad Radke again struggled early givig up 6 runs in the first 3 innings of the game. Radke was pulled in the 3rd and Matt Guerrier finished out the inning. Throught 5 starts this season Radke has no quality starts and his only two wins were a result of massive run support. After having arm trouble late last season, and now struggling mightily this season, Radke is starting to become a concern.

The Twins had a good day on Thursday against the Royals both offensively and defensively. Lefties Morneau and Mauer and also Batista and Castro had the day off today. Mark Redman started for the Royals, but didn't make it through the 2nd.

You know that optimistic feeling all baseball fans have at the beginning of the season? Well, that's starting to wear off. It doesn't look like the Twins have improved their offense as much as we'd hoped. Wednesday night, Runelvys Hernandez, who didn't even start the season in the Royals rotation limited the Twins to 2 hits, no walks, and 1 run in 7 innings. The Twins picked up a hit in both the 8th and 9th innings, for a grand total of 4 hits in the game. The only run of the game came on Justin Morneau's 5th homer of the season.

The Twins ended their 4 game skid by sneaking past the Royals in a wet Tuesday night game in Kansas City. The Win brought the Twins record to 8-11 and became the 8th come-from-behind win of the season for the Twins.

This past week was similar to week one -- a record of 1-5 and not many good things to talk about. Let's jump right into the discussion of the players this week and cross our fingers that next week goes a lot better.

It was the same story in this game as it's been though far too many games this year. The Twins got a terrible start from Carlos Silva and weren't able to get nearly enough runs on the board. The Twins played poorly all weekend and the White Sox looked great.

Making the lineup card for Saturday night's game wasn't an easy task for Ron Gardenhire. Shannon Stewart is still away with his wife who just gave birth to their first child. Luis Castillo is still hobbled with the knee injury from Thursday's game, and Ruben Sierra is a bit sore from fouling a ball off the ankle. All this meant Rondell White, the usual DH was playing in Left field, Luis Rodgriguez was playing at second, Joe Mauer was the DH, and Mike Redmond was behind the plate.

This game was a lot closer than the final score indicated. As predicted, the Mark Buehrle and Johan Santana matchup turned out to be a pitchers duel--until the 8th inning.

The Twins dropped the final game of the 3 game set with the Angles and also last the series 2 game to 1. Jesse Crain took the loss for the Twins giving up 2 runs in the 8th inning. Crain pitched scoreless 6th and 7th innings, and then retired the first 2 batters in the 8th. He gave up 3 straight hits after that including a double to Jose Molina. Crain shouldn't have gone 3 innings today, but Lohse's poor outing yesterday caused the bullpen to get used up.

The Angels gave the Twins every opportunity to win this game, yet it still took 10 innings for the Twins to finally squeeze out a victory in the high scoring affair. Mistakes by the Angels included 2 errors, a balk and 7 walks by Angel pitching.

The Twins took another loss and fell below .500 in their opening game against the Angels. Once again, Ron Gardenhire seemed to let his starter go a little longer than he should've. Carlos Silva gave up 2 runs in the 4th, 3 runs in the 5th and then managed to pitch 3 scoreless innings. He was brought out in the 9th inning and gave up 3 more runs. Silva and Gardenhire were both ejected from the game when Gardenhire went out to pull Silva from the game. Silva started things off by yelling at the home plate umpire, Jerry Meals, and after Silva was tossed, Gardenhire got in the face of Meals. This was Gardenhire's first heated argument with of the season and his first ejection of the year. Jesse Crain came on to finish the 9th.

First, I want to say that Rondell White is a quality hitter and his batting average won't stay at .085 for long. That being said, Rondell White should not be the cleanup hitter on this team. The first two weeks have been played and I can't count how many runners White has left out on base. Stewart, Castillo and Mauer have all been very good at the top of the lineup and numerous runs could've been scored if Rondell White had played only half as horrendous as he actually did. I don't think there's a team in baseball that has a guy intentionally walked to get to the cleanup hitter (especially twice in 1 game).

Last week I whined about how difficult it was to pick a player of the week, since the team as a whole had played so poorly. I hoped that this week's decision would be difficult for a different reason, and my wish has certainly come true.

After dropping the first two games of the series, the Yankees set out to remind the Twins just who they were, and that's exactly what they did on Sunday at the Metrodome. Brad Radke gave up 3 runs in the 2nd inning including a deep homerun for Jason Giambi. Radke also gave up 2 runs in the 5th and 1 run in the 6th. Radke gave up 3 homeruns in the game after neither team hit any homeruns in the first two games of the series.

The Twins played their most exciting game of the season Saturday night against the Yankees, pulling off a victory in the bottom of the 9th inning with a 2-run hit by Justin Morneau.

Scott Baker, the Twins fifth starter, gave the Twins their best start of the season, against arguably their best opponent. Baker went 7 innings giving up only 3 hits, 1 walk and 1 run to a potent Yankee lineup.

The Twins are riding high after completing the sweep against Oakland today at the Metrodome. Similar to their other 3 victories this season, the Twins fell behind early as Kyle Lohse struggled in the 1st inning. Lohse gave up 2 runs and threw 30 pitches before getting out of the inning, but he was solid after that.

The Twins starters haven't been real effective yet this season, but it's been great to see the resiliency of the Minnesota bats. The Twins have trailed in all three of their victories this season. In the first win, they were down by 4 before coming back with 13 runs. In the first two games of the Oakland series the Twins were down by 4 runs and 3 runs, respectively, before coming back to win each game by one run.

I wasn't able to catch much of this game, so my notes will be a little limited on this one. I'll be watching the archived game on MLB.tv before I go to bed tonight. Please leave some comments if I left something important out.

Twins Nation is now a little more than 3 weeks old and traffic to the site is starting to grow, so I want to take a moment to explain all the areas the site has to offer.

The Athletics came into the dome riding the momentum of series victories over the Yankees and Mariners, but the 4-run lead they established early in the game wasn't enough to hold off the Twins. In front of a sell-out home opener crowd, the Twins recorded their second victory of the season.

The season is underway, so it's time to start what will become a weekly series at Twins Nation. Monday is often an off day for the Twins, so we'll take advantage of it to announce who we think was the most valuable player of the previous week for the Twins.

After the first week of baseball our offense has at time looked better, and at other times looked like last year's offense. The cold weather in Clevelend probably played a big part in the Twins' poor offensive production there. It's not too surprising that the offense has started out a little slow, but it is surprising the way the starting pitching has begun the season.

Live commentary was provided for this game.

The only things colder than the weather in Cleveland were the bats of the Twins. Jason Johnson, a mediocre pitcher, dominated the Twins for 7 innings. Johnson gave up 4 hits and one walk in the game.

The Twins pitching struggles continued today against the Cleveland Indians. Every time the Twins put some runs on the board, Cleveland would answer in the bottom of the inning with runs of their own.

The Twins dropped the final game of the series with the Blue Jays. The game recap can be seen in the scoreboard area.

The Twins dropped the series after losing the 3rd game to the Blue Jays by a score of 6 to 3. Mauer, Kubel and Castro had the day off in preparation for tomorrow's day game in Cleveland (and also because of a LHP tonight).

Twins Win! Only Tony Batista could be stopped tonight. The first few days of this season have seen a lot of high scoring games, so clearly a lot of pitchers haven't worked off their rust yet. However, it was still nice to see the Twins put some runs up on the board. It provides a glimmer of hope that maybe this offense is improved over last season. In all of 2005 the most runs the Twins scored in a single game was 12. We've already surpassed that with 13 tonight!

The Blue Jays didn't have a pitcher that could shut down the Twins' bats tonight. After falling behind 4-0 early in the game, the Twins batters came back with 13 unanswered runs.

I posted some live commentary and a game recap over in the scoreboard section, so check that out for details of the game. From time-to-time over the course of the season I'll keep a running live commentary on games, so be sure to stop by during games and leave comments as well.

The Twins couldn't muster the offense needed against Roy Halladay and B.J. Ryan in the season opener. Santana clearly wasn't in midseason form as he seemed to hit a wall in the 6th inning. The Twins hit two homeruns (Batista and Stewart) but couldn't get enough baserunners to put runs on the board.

The last two seasons Johan Santana has been arguably the most dominant pitcher in baseball. He has more strikeouts than any pitcher over the past two seasons and has finished each season with an ERA below 3.00. However, over these same two seasons we've come to know two different Johan Santanas. We have "Johan the Great" and "Johan the Absolutely Amazing". Johan has built a reputation of starting off the season a little slow, and then coming on strong after the All-Star break. Let's take a look at the numbers:

Exhibition Game.

In Baseball, you'd rather be playing well in the month of September than in April, so you have some momentum going into the playoffs. However, when it comes to making the playoffs, April games count just as much as those in September. The first few weeks of the Twins' season could prove to be pretty important when it comes to how the season is going to turn out. Let's take a look at the tough matchups they'll be facing right away.

Spring training is, for the most part, wrapped up and just about every position on the team has been decided. That means it's time to introduce the 2006 Twins, at least as they will be on Tuesday, April 4th.

Spring Training Game.