Angels 8, Twins 2 Angels 8 at Twins 2 April 18th, 2006 at 9:55 pm
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.
The Twins bats struck out 12 times during the game, 3 of which were Hunter’s. The bottom of the lineup did most of the work for the Twins with Lew Ford and Juan Castro both getting 2 hits. Lew Ford also stole 3rd base in the 3rd inning in which it appeared that a call was missed by someone; Castro got himself into a rundown allowing Ford to get to third safely. Ford scored both runs for the Twins.
Rondell White and Tony Batista were swapped in the batting order. Batista was 0-for-4 in the cleanup spot and White managed to get one hit in the #7 spot, and did take more pitches than he has been. It’s still too soon to say he’s out of his slump. I don’t really like Gardy’s decision to put Batista in the cleanup spot. Morneau should be the cleanup hitter as he’s probably the best long-term fit for the position. Perhaps Gardenhire intends to eventually put White back into the cleanup role, in which case I would’ve liked to have seen Ruben Sierra hit in the DH role and cleanup spot tonight.
In the Division
- Cleveland had a big day, beating Baltimore 15-1, and getting 20 hits.
- The ChiSox defeated Kansas City. Don’t worry, we’ll get to play KC before the month is over.
- Detroit was trailing Oakland 3-1 at the time of this writing. So far, Esteban Loaiza is fairing better than he did against the Twins last week.
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