Oakland Topic Page

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.

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.

The Twins 9-2 victory over the White Sox on Tuesday night clinched a fourth straight series win for the Twins as they've quickly become the hottest team in the AL Central. They've won 6 of their last 7 and moved into a third place tie with the White Sox and trail the Cleveland Indians by 5.5 games.

The Twins have ridded themselves of one problem in Sidney Ponson, but there are still many more. Joe Mauer is still out for at least another week and despite Sunday's breakout performance, the offense has struggled to produce runs as the Twins have lost 4 straight series. To make matters worse they'll take on the 21-14 Indians who are 11-3 at their combined homes (They played a series in Milwaukee).

Arguably the greatest regular season in Twins history is over and the Twins find themselves hosting the Oakland Athletics rather than playing in New York. It's the playoffs, so there's no saying what will happen. One thing is for certain though: Minnesota workplace productivity will drop to an all time low in this first week of October.

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.

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.

Friday night's victory can almost entirely be credited to Johan Santana's performance, with an assist going to Justin Morneau for his 8th inning homerun. Johan gave up a solo homer to Frank Thomas in the 2nd and also gave up a single in the inning. After that he was literally perfect. Not a single Oakland batter reached base in the third through eigth innings. Johan simply dominated, yet remained down by 1 run until the eigth inning.

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.

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.