I was going to write up a nice, long, thoughtful post for today, but the conclusion of yesterday's game sapped me of all motivation. What a painful loss. The Twins battled their way to a 2-0 lead with two outs in the ninth inning only to watch Joe Nathan implode, delivering the worst performance in his six-year career as Twins closer at an extremely inopportune time. Throwing away such a brilliant outing from Brian Duensing (7 IP, 0 R, 5 H, 2 BB, 7 K) makes the loss all the more difficult to swallow, because one really has to wonder how many more outings like that the Twins are going to get from him this season.
There's reason to worry about Nathan, who simply hasn't looked like himself in recent outings -- if he is going to be a liability for the final month of the season, the Twins won't have much of a chance. Of course, rebounding from such a heartbreaking loss will be enough of a challenge in and of itself.
Recommended Twins Reading
Beat Writer Blogs
Around the League
Quintessential Baseball Reading
Blog Archive
-
▼
2009
(188)
-
▼
September
(16)
- A Split and a Big Splash
- Mid-Day Post: Twins Take the First
- A Big Day
- Crunch Time
- Twins/Royals Series Preview
- Another Shot For Liriano?
- Somehow, Still Kicking
- Still In It
- A Win For Bill Smith
- Morneau Out For Season
- Misperceptions
- Belly Up
- The Light is Dimming
- Ugh
- Prospect Rundown: August
- Mauer For MVP: An Open and Shut Case
-
▼
September
(16)
Tons Of Tickets is a leading ticket seller for all the best sports tickets, as well as the hottest concert tickets and theatre events worldwide.
Header logo designed by Tom Ecker.
Minnesota.com
3 comments:
He went to his signature pitch, the wipeout slider, as he would expect to at the 2-out, nobody on base, 0-2 count moment, and found he didn't have it -- and couldn't get it back.
Hate it when that happens.
I didn't see the game nor did I catch replays, so I appreciate the breakdown of what went wrong. Seems like after he gave up that homer he completely lost his command, and in general he's been struggling with his control lately. As Twins Geek notes in his post today, this is a somewhat typical occurrence for Nathan at this point in the season; hopefully he can bounce back as he's been able to in the past.
He hasn't had much for command since that game he threw all those pitches and waved Gardy back to the dugout. I don't know if he hurt himself or what, but I haven't seen Nathan look like this since he came over.
Post a Comment