Todd Jones Topic Page

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.

The Twins dug themselves a six run hole on Saturday night and they nearly worked themselves out of it, but Detroit added a couple late insurance runs to hold on to the lead. Brad Radke pitched only 3 innings and he ran into trouble in all of them. He gave up 7 hits and 4 runs before Kyle Lohse came in for the fourth. Lohse quickly gave up a two-run homer in the fourth to put the Twins down by 6. He did, however, come back with 2 scoreless innings.

In a way Friday night's series opener against Detroit was encouraging in that the Twins put up a good 10 inning fight against baseball's best team. However, it was also disappointing in that Francisco Liriano put together another masterpiece but the offense couldn't score more than 2 runs off rookie Zach Miner who was coming off two straight rough outings.

The Twins dropped their fifth straight game and were swept again by the Tigers Thursday afternoon. This is the fourth time the Twins have been swept by an AL Central opponent. Radke struggled early again and the Twins trailed this entire game. Radke did, however, pick up a quality start as 2 of the 5 runs he gave up were unearned. The Twins had 3 errors in the game (Punto throwing, Castro throwing, Morneau fielding) which combined with Detroit's 2 errors set up for a pretty sloppy day of baseball.