Brad Radke Topic Page

The Twins won Thursday night's series finale in 10 innings by a score of 2-1. The big story of the night was Brad Radke's encouraging start. He needed just 57 pitches to get through five innings and allowed just 1 unearned run. The Twins offense waited until there were 2 outs in the ninth inning to do anything, so Radke didn't get in the win what was likely the final regular season start of his career. Assuming he's healthy enough, it seems likely that Radke will be the Twins' third starter in the playoffs.

The resurgence of Brad Radke continues to impress me. Early in the season Radke was terrible, and we later discovered that he was indeed pitching with pain in his throwing shoulder. He's continued to battle through the pain all season and has been an effective pitcher over the past couple months. On Sunday Radke came up with another great outing against one of the league's best offenses and avoided a four-game sweep by the Blue Jays.

The Twins won the first game of the Milwaukee series in convincing fashion. Back-to-back homeruns from Justin Morneau and Torii Hunter in the second inning gave the Twins an early lead that they only added to throughout the game. Terry Tiffee added a third homer in the sixth. Brad Radke continued to pitch well and he's now improved his record to 7-7 and dropped his ERA to 5.11. He's only 2 wins shy of his 2005 win total.

After the worst start to a season of his career, Brad Radke has put together two pretty good outings and the Twins have still lost both of them. Baseball is a funny game; for two months we cursed about how the starting pitching has let us down. Now we've entered June and seen three good starts but have only managed three combined runs in those games. The worse thing though, is that we're losing games that we should be winning. Errors and situational blunders have piled up this season and have played a partial role in the lack of success in the win column.

Radke has been the definition of consistency for the Twins since he entered the rotation in 1995. From 1996 through 2005 Radke pitched at least 200 innings every year except 2002 (118.1). Excluding his rookie year he's never finished with an ERA that didn't begin with 3 or 4. That kind of consistency definitely earns you a level of goodwill from your team and your fans. It's largely the reason the Twins have stuck by him through his 2 months of struggles so far.

Through the first 4 1/2 innings of Saturday night's game Brad Radke worked the Twins into a 0-4 deficit and the bats remained largely silent against Javier Vasquez. Radke pitched a quick 1st inning but allowed 1 run in each the 2nd and 3rd innings. Radke gave up 2 more runs in the 5th making the expected outcome of the game look pretty bleak.

Brad Radke's start last week turned out to be what we all expected -- mostly a result of the team he was pitching against. Texas does have some good hitters, so maybe I'm being a bit too harsh on him, but with the way his season has gone so far he doesn't exactly deserve the benefit of the doubt. Radke managed to get through the game without surrendering any homeruns, but he did give up 4 doubles during another of his batting practice outings.

After losing 4 straight the Twins now have a winning streak started after beating Seattle on Tuesday night and Kansas City on Wednesday night. The Twins have also finally found a cure for Brad Radke's early inning struggles -- the Kansas City Royals. Radke gave up just 3 hits, no walks and no runs through the first 6 innings of the game. He did finally surrender a solo homerun to Matt Stairs in the 7th (it's not a true Radke start without a homerun allowed). By that time the Twins already had a comfortable 6 run lead. Fransisco Liriano came in to finish the came and after being a little roughed up in his last outing, he was back to his old ways Wednesday night, striking out 3 and allowing just 1 hit in 2 innings.

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 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.