Through the 4-game series in Oakland the Twins scored just 4 runs, so it’s no surprise they came out of the series with just one win. What’s the cause of the offense slump? It’s likely a number of things.

• The hot streak that Hunter and Cuddyer were on in May has ended leaving pretty much no production from the 4 and 5 spots in the lineup.
• They don’t have a leadoff hitter. Gardy has tried Lew Ford, Nick Punto and Jason Kubel in the leadoff spot with pretty much no success from any of them. I’ve argued before that Luis Castillo should bat leadoff, but that still leaves us with a gap in the #2 spot. Kubel doesn’t like batting leadoff, but could he bat 2nd or 3rd? It’ll be at least another week before Shannon Stewart returns, so it’d be nice to see Gardy get over his fear of shuffling up the lineup.
• Luis Castillo has been in a slump. For a while he was getting on base in every way possible.
• Lack of timely hitting. Even when the Twins have baserunners they’ve managed to strikeout or hit into a double play.

It was frustrating again Sunday to see the Twins squander opportunities to score. Rich Harden was definitely having control problems early in the game and the Twins left two baserunners on the paths 3 times in the first 4 innings. The only run of the game came on Joe Mauer’s first inning solo homer.

Carlos Silva returned to the rotation in this game, but wasn’t exactly stellar. The groundouts weren’t there like they should and he got hit pretty hard in the 2nd inning and gave up a solo homer to Dan Johnson in the fourth. Silva gave up 4 of Oakland’s runs in the five innings he pitched.

Game Notes

• Joe Mauer had one hit in the game, the solo homer. He hit a couple other balls pretty hard but they didn’t drop in for hits.
• Luis Rodriguez played 3rd base and picked up 2 hits in the game. He made a costly throwing error that allowed a run to score in the 8th, but he also made some nice plays on balls (including the diving stop he made on the same play he committed the error). Tony Batista wouldn’t have made the error; the ball would’ve gone by him and down the 3rd base line for a double.
• Juan Castro was 2-3 in the game.

Looking Ahead

The Twins will have Monday off before heading to Seattle to finish up the west-coast road trip. Tuesday night will feature a rematch of the young phenoms, Francisco Liriano and Felix Hernandez. Liriano won the last match after the Twins got to Hernandez early before he settled in to pitch a pretty good game overall. One thing to look out for is how Liriano will fair against a lineup that’s had a chance to see him and make adjustments.