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| Francisco Liriano gave up 10 hits and seven runs in five innings on Thursday night. |
Box score here.
The Twins continue to spin their wheels. They last won a series right after the All-Star break, July 14-17, when they took three of four from Kansas City. Since then, they've avoided actual long losing streaks, bu they aren't putting anything together, either.
We can sum up this one in the same way as the opener of the series in Anaheim: One run won't win many games, and one run wasn't close to enough to win this one.
Francisco Liriano wasn't effective, but neither was the Twins defense behind him. That will happen when a right fielder (Michael Cuddyer) is playing second base and a catcher (Joe Mauer) is playing first. As Ron Gardenhire sees it, five of the seven runs scored after the Twins failed to turn two makeable double plays.
Of course, if you wipe out those five runs, the Twins still lose 2-1.
Another what-the-heck-is-going-on moment came when Danny Valencia was thrown out at home plate in the eighth inning. There's no point in taking any risk to score when down 7-1.
I could not believe it when Valencia tried to score, but I really became upset when Bert criticized Valencia for a "soft" slide instead os questioning why he was trying to score in the first place.
ReplyDeleteI am happy that Bert is finally in the HOF, but I understand why serious fans would rather turn off the audio when they watch the game.