Sunday, August 20, 2006

Sloppy D Results in Loss

Despite another solid outing from Brad Radke, the Twins fell victim to their own mistakes last night in a 4-1 loss to the Chicago White Sox. Three of the four runs the Sox scored came in as the result of sloppy defensive plays by the Twins, and the misplays forced Radke to throw more pitches than he should have and wasted a pretty impressive outing in which he picked up six strikeouts over five innings.

Once again, the Twins offense was thoroughly dominated by a mediocre starting pitcher. This time, instead of Paul Byrd, it was Jon Garland holding the Twins to one unearned run and five hits over 7 and 2/3 innings. In fairness, there were several hard-hit balls that either went right at a fielder or that a Chicago player made a very nice play on, but the clutch hitting was not there last night.

Michael Cuddyer grounded into a double play to end a potential threat in the first inning, and then struck out in his final at-bat to extend his season-long strikeout streak to 12 games. Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau both went hitless. The Twins had only five hits over the course of the game, and they were all singles. It was an ugly effort, and they will need to improve this afternoon if they want to give Johan Santana a chance to win.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Looks like the boys took your words to heart. The bats were much better today. Now, an off day, then 3 with the Orioles while the Tigers and Pale Hose square off. That's a great chance to pick up ground on one or the other or both.