June 2007 Archives

Just a quick note, that I'm gonna be taking the weekend off from the blog. Be sure to check up on the Clubhouse for all the great Twins coverage it has to offer.

Everyone in the Twins' organization constantly preaches about doing the little things right. Dick and Bert seemed to emphasize the importance of playing defense, stealing, bunting, etc. even more than usual on Wednesday night's telecast.

Last night in his post-game press conference Ron Gardenhire was clear about the need for starters to pitch deeper into games. Kevin Slowey had just turned in a five inning start and Matt Guerrier gave up the lead late in the game.

Just pointing out his numbers...

Kevin Slowey allowed 2 homeruns and 5 total runs through 5 innings on Monday night as the Blue Jays edged the Twins by a score of 8-5. The Twins had been 4-0 in Slowey starts before the game.

The Twins scored first in the game when Joe Mauer hit a solo homerun, just his second of the year, off start Byun-Hyun Kim. Johan Santana gave away the lead in the bottom of the inning on a Dan Uggla homerun, but he then helped the Twins regain the lead for good in the next inning.

I'm a little late for a full recap of Saturday nights game. It was a good one for the Twins bats and Carlos Silva, with his early run support, was able to settle in for a nice seven innings of pitching. The one thing I wanted to take a closer look at was two guys who fans have had mixed feelings about so far this season: Jason Kubel and Jason Bartlett.

The Twins tied the Marlins 4-4 in the eighth, but it came with a huge cost. Scott Ulger initially held up Justin Morneau on a Jason Kubel double to left, but when Josh Willingham had trouble fielding the ball in left he sent Morneau home. The ball beat Morneau and he was forced to collide with Miguel Olivo who was blocking home plate. Olivo missed the ball, Morneau was safe and even Kubel came around to tie the game. Morneau was slow to get up though and came out of the game after that inning.

Scott Baker picked up his first victory since his season debut on May 19th in Milwaukee. He was pulled after five innings in favor of a pinch hitter after pitching two scoreless innings. The pinch hit move ended up paying off as the Twins expanded the lead from 3-2 to 6-2 in that inning.

Johan Santana had his most successful start of 2007 and threw his first shutout since 2005 (and only 4th in his career) on Tuesday night against the Mets. The 9-0 victory was a nice turnaround from Monday night's 8-1 loss.

The Twins are now exactly at that milestone record of last season, 34-34. It was the day they finally reached .500 and they went on to never drop below that again. This year the Twins could very well fall below .500 on Tuesday night, even with Santana on the mound. They're not playing nearly as well as at this time a year ago, and there's not much indication of them getting better.

The Twins put together a 9-2 lead after five innings of baseball on Sunday, but Kevin Slowey and Juan Rincon allowed them to creep back into things which set up an interesting ninth inning. Slowey struggled with his control early and manged to work out of some jams in the first two innings. He settled in a little bit, but allowed 3 home runs and left after pitching 5 1/3 and giving up 4 runs.

Boof Bonser turned in a decent start on Saturday night against the Brewers, but once again the offense gave the starting pitcher virtually no chance to win. The Twins bats were up against Dave Bush, who had a 3-6 record and an ERA of 5.70 coming into the game. Scoring runs shouldn't have been a problem, yet they managed just 2 runs through the entire game.

Scott Baker's start was going along just fine through the first three innings. It looked like he might repeat the success he had in his season debut in Milwaukee last month when he came just shy of a complete game. It all fell apart in the fourth inning though when Geoff Jenkins hit a grand slam over the baggy to put the Brewers ahead 4-1.

Even after 16 years, the baseball gods refuse to allow the Atlanta Braves to win in the dome. It looked like they had the victory pretty much wrapped up on Thursday night as they headed into the bottom of the ninth with a 2 run lead. Although Johan Santana had pitched a pretty good game, Tim Hudson was even better. He shut out the Twins through 7 1/3 innings pitched and was inexplicably pulled in the eighth despite throwing just 84 pitches.

The Twins offense attached Braves starter, Chuck James early, and Carlos Silva bounced back from a poor start last time out with his best performance in two years. Silva went the distance and allowed 8 hits in his first shutout since 2004. It was also his first complete game since 2005. The last time Silva got 6+ runs scored for him was in an 11-3 win in Detroit at the end of April.

If my math is correct, the Braves have a 5 game losing streak in the Dome dating back to October of 1991. The victory on Tuesday night brought the Twins back to the .500 mark at 31-31. Despite not playing particularly well, the Twins have managed to gain 2 games in the past week against the Indians. They now trail both Detroit and Cleveland by what seems like a more reasonable 5.5 games.

The Twins are just coming off an embarrassing series loss to the last place team in the NL East, the Washington Nationals, and now they’ll host the 2nd place Atlanta Braves. The Braves are 35-29 on the year and are just 2 games behind the division leading Mets. After losing 6 of 7 the Braves just won a couple straight games against the Cubbies.

The Twins have lost their third straight series by a score of by a score of 2 games to 1. On Sunday they were in the lead for the entire game after scoring 3 runs right away in the first inning.

Jayson Stark, on his Insider Blog, wrote about Luis Castillo's low slugging percentage. He's currently on pace to break his own record, set in 2000, for .330+ hitter.

Coming into this series I really thought the Twins had a legitimate shot at a sweep. Not only were they playing one of the worst teams in baseball, but they were facing three starting pitches who were barely holding onto jobs at the big-league level. Now they've lost 2 straight and will be playing Sunday to avoid getting swept themselves.

Carlos Silva retired just 9 batters in 3+ innings while allowing 9 hits and 2 walks. The light-hitting Nationals put up a .500 batting average and a 21.00 ERA against Silva in what was his shortest outing of the season.

The Twins will return to the Metrodome after a rough 2-4 road trip to the west coast. They're probably a bit relieved (I know I am) to be getting back into interleague play. The National league has treated them quite well recently. In 2006 the Twins were 16-2 in interleague play and so far this year they've got the 2-1 series victory against Milwaukee.

The Twins drafted Ben Revere as their first pick (28th overall) of the 2007 amateur draft. He's straight out of Lexington Catholic HS in Kentucky and is described as a speedy guy with a light bat.

Apologies for the late game recap, Late nights caught up with me and I didn't get the time or energy to write this last night.

Less than a week ago it looked like the Twins' season was turning around. They had won 5 straight and 8 out of 9 and were slowly closing the gap between them and the division leading Indians. Now they've suddenly lost 4 straight on their west coast road trip as their offense has managed just 6 runs in the four games. They've had two complete games thrown against them. One came on Saturday by Joe Blanton and most recently on Tuesday night against Kelvim Escobar.

The final two games in Oakland caused some concern about a Twins offensive slump. That offensive slump continued while the Angels piled up 16 runs on 23 hits in the series opener on Monday night.

The Twins will continue their short west coast swing with a 3-game set in Anaheim to face the Angels. The Twins will send out 3 starters who have a combined 58 career starts at the big league level. They will match up like so:

Johan Santana wasn't exactly on his game Sunday in Oakland, but the Twins still had chances to win the game. When scoring opportunities came up, Twins hitters simply couldn't get the job done and Oakland was able to win the rubber game of the series by a score of 4-2. The loss sent the Twins to their first series loss since they were swept by Cleveland on May 15-17th. The Twins had won 4 straight series.

For the fourth time this season, the Twins were shutout while Carlos Silva took the mound. Sadly, on all four occasions Silva pitched well enough to give the Twins the win. Silva allowed just 1 run and 5 hits through 8 innings for his longest outing of the season. However, Joe Blanton held the Twins to just 3 hits as he went the distance for Oakland. The loss snapped the Twins' 5 game winning streak.

Friday night's game was one that almost surely would not have been won with Ramon Ortiz starting. The Twins offense was able to score just 1 run off Oakland lefty Joe Kennedy in 8 innings. Kevin Slowey held down the Oakland offense through six inning and left the game with a 1-1 tie. His only flaw was a sixth inning homerun to Eric Chavez.