My last (?) Dome game

Tragic number: 13. Can't count on the Royals beating Detroit every game.

My wife and I went Wednesday to what we expect will be our final game at the Metrodome (photo, right, by Linda Vanderwerf). While the journey itself will, for reasons irrelevant to the blog, likely be more memorable than the game itself, a few observations:

* More examples of how difficult it is to capture defense in the stats. Cleveland's Aaron Laffey — a pitcher I really like — was victimized repeatedly by the apparent decision by his teammates that cutoff plays are overrated. A Twin heads to third, the throw has no chances of getting him, the throw goes through, and the batter takes second base. Some variation on this play happened three times Wednesday, and it would have been four if Jason Kubel could run — and the Twins turned those extra bases into three runs.

Then there's Jose Morales's second double of the game — or, as I would have scored it, single and error on Shin-Soo Choo. Next guy (Matt Tolbert) hits an grounder to first, Morales goes to third, later scores. If Morales is held to a single, maybe the Indians can keep him out of scoring position.

These things matter to Laffey. Well, they matter to all pitchers, but they particularly matter to a Tommy-John-in-training. He's going to give up hits. He needs his defense to keep the double play in order, and they didn't do that Wednesday. So he gets saddled with six earned runs — but if the defense had been sharper, it's three or so.

Not to oversell Laffey's performance. He did give up 12 hits and three walks, and he didn't strike out anybody. He's been better.

* It sure seems as if they've had more problems with the Dome's dirt since the football season started and the Dome has to do double duty. At least twice now the grounds crew has had to come out for mid-game mound reconstruction, and on Wednesday Michael Cuddyer twice spent pitching changes over at the mound cleaning mud out of his spikes.

Mud. In the Dome. Strange.

* Jose Morales can hit. (Two doubles and a sac fly, a run and an RBI in four plate appearances.)

* Carlos Gomez can run. (Scored from first on a double by Cuddyer — who took third on the throw home. See above.)

* The bullpen made me nervous. Jose Mijares, Jesse Crain, Matt Guerrier and Joe Nathan combined to throw 67 pitches to get eight outs. Only 36 of those pitches were strikes.

Two left-handed pitchers

By the time I returned to Mankato from a mission to my parents Wednesday, the Twins game was essentially over.

Francisco Liriano ( left) was having his customary problems commanding his fast ball.

Aaron Laffey (right) was getting grounder after grounder.

Laffey is a pitcher to keep an eye on. My print column a couple of weeks ago about Mark Buehrle put the White Sox lefty in the Tommy John family of pitchers — fairly low strikeout rates, very low walk rate, lots of grounders, lots of base hits, holds runners well, keeps the ball in the park. Laffey fits that profile even better than does Burhrle, with the exception of the walks. He's walked 29 hitters in 65-plus innings this year, and that's too many.

But time's on his side; he's just 24, and as noted in the Buehrle column, members of this family seldom peak young. I think that's a maturity factor — it takes time to master the nuances and to be patient with the approach. Two singles to start an inning might lead an inexperienced pitcher to panic; the older guy's been there and done that.

Cleveland's had Laffey up and down for three seasons — 40 games, 34 starts, 208-plus innings — and he's gone 14-12 with a 4.10 ERA.

He's a better bet going forward than Nick Blackburn or Glen Perkins, the Twins low-strikeout starters.