Date: 9/12/09

Opponent: Oakland Athletics

Home/Away: Home

Starting Pitcher: Manship

Final Score: L 4-2

Record: 70-72

Best Moment: And the Twins follow a brutal loss with an equally painful tight and nearly offense-free one. Stellar. The pitching was much improved today, but it still wasn't great, and it wasn't enough to win. But, hey, at least Harris had a good day! I actually thought we would win this one just to get back to .500. 

Most Questionable Moment: I like Mike Redmond as a person, but he just kills us every time he's our catcher. Can we please let Morales be the primary back-up catcher? Please? Things Mike Redmond is bad at: throwing out baserunners, getting hits, running faster than a snail's pace, having productive at bats. Things Mike Redmond is good at: naked batting practice, grounding into double plays, predictably hitting the ball to the right side when he actually makes contact with the ball, being old.

Worst Moment: It's not that we had 6 hits (well, it's partially that). It's that Oakland had 6 hits, too, and they managed 2 more runs. And worse, those 2 runs scored in an inning witout a hit. Manship walked 2, then Crain walked 1, then they hit 2 sac flies. Painful, I tell you, painful. Our pitchers walked 6 and that's all it took. Admittedly, I thought the ump's strike zone was rather small and inconsistent, but that's no excuse.

Quotations of the Day:

• "Bottom line is that we're not getting the job done. We're two games under .500 and we're playing like that. We're playing like a team that should be under .500. We have an opportunity to chase those guys down ahead of us, because they aren't winning ballgames and we're not taking advantage of it. It's very disappointing." - Ron Gardenhire
• "That's definitely on my conscious right now. It's definitely hard to stomach that. The three walks I had, they all scored and that was my biggest problem today. I definitely felt I made some good pitches but that right there killed me." - Jeff Manship
• "We still have enough time. But we're running out of it and we need to play a little more desperately. I don't know if yesterday's game carried over or not but usually we play with a lot more energy at home. This is where we're supposed to come out, feed off the crowd and play well. Today was tough." - Justin Morneau. I don't know, you look pretty desperate out there.

Suck-Ass Performance of the Game: Mike Redmond (0 for 2, 1 GIDP, 4 stolen bases off him, 2 left on base)