Date: 6/6/10

Opponent: Oakland Athletics

Home/Away: Away

Starting Pitcher: Blackburn

Final Score: L 5-4

Record: 33-24

Recap: Sorry for the late post. That wasn't the kind of game that gets me real excited to blog. And I've been busy with work. And my dog ate my homework. Oh wait, wrong excuse. Anyway, it was a pretty shitty game. Blackburn got chased from the game by a pack of rabid kangaroos in the 3rd inning having surrendered 5 runs on 10 hits. To be fair, most of the runs came after defensive miscues. One of the first two runs scored in the 1st inning after Punto failed to make a barehanded play that would have been the third out. The third run came after Delmon Young had a ball bounce out of his glove in the 2nd, although he at least recovered enough to throw out a runner at the plate after tracking down the ball. Then in the 3rd inning Harris couldn't track down a ground ball which led to an infield single. 2 runs scored later in the inning on 2 outs, so they could have been prevented if he had gotten that out. All of Blackburn's runs scored with 2 outs actually. But while Blackburn's defense perhaps didn't do him any favors (and how could it given that we trotted out the Worst Infield in History for the second day running), he still was giving up way too many hits. 

Our offense was pretty pathetic overall. I mean, we had the same atrocious lineup from Saturday, but we actually made it worse, something I didn't think was possible, by DHing Mauer and inserting Butera as the catcher. So we 3 players (Tolbert, Harris and Butera) batting well under .200. Not to mention that 1 of them was batting 2nd in our order. Oy. And then we have Valencia, who has a grand total of 3 hits, all of them weak infield hits. I'm getting really sick of having players who can't play on our bench instead of the DL. I know it sucks to lose Hudson and/or Hardy for 15 days, but how many times already this year have we tried to give a player time to heal and then had them end up on the DL anyway. 

But back to the offense. Our first run scored in the 2nd inning after Harris hit an "infield single" which could have easily just been ruled an error. I wonder if the official scorer just felt sorry for him after seeing his itty-bitty batting average. Skinny Delmon scored on the play, and it was officially ruled an infield single with an error on the throw by the 3rd baseman which allowed the run to score. We added another run the next inning after Span tripled and Tolbert hit a sac fly. That was it for us until the 8th. We were down 3 runs when Skinny Delmon homered with 2 outs in the inning. Mauer had walked earlier in the inning, so we trailed by 1 run. Thome pinch-hit for Valencia and doubled. Hardy ran for him, bringing Harris to the plate with the tying run in scoring position. Because of all the injuries, we didn't have any other infielders available and thus had no options for pinch-hitting. At this point the loss was a foregone conclusion. There was no way Harris was going to do anything except strike out looking. As near as I can tell, his chief value for the team is that he is uninjured and can play anywhere in the infield. Unfortunately that value is basically negated by the fact that he plays none of those positions particularly well, leading me to the conclusion that Harris is less useful than a Potty Patch. Unless he were to decide to let dogs urinate him, whereupon he would achieve a similar level of utility. Hmm, that sounded harsh. He really needs to figure his shit out though.

So we ended up losing by 1 run. At least the bullpen was excellent. Duensing, Mahay and Burnett combined for 5.1 innings with 3 hits and no runs. It was a very small bright spot for the Twins. Michael Cuddyer should be returning Tuesday, and rumor has it that Hudson will go on the DL at that time. We shall see though. The Royals are our next series; maybe we can beat them up a bit.

Best Moment: Um, we didn't lose the series?

Most Questionable Moment: Somehow taking the craptastic lineup from Saturday and finding a way to making it suck even more.

Worst Moment: The first 3 innings.

Quotations of the Day:

• "It's just frustrating to do that two outings in a row to the bullpen. Luckily, we have the day off tomorrow, but it's not a whole lot of fun to go out there and do that." - Nick Blackburn
• "Our bullpen came in and did a really good job of shutting them down and gave us a great opportunity to get back in the game." - Ron Gardenhire
• "He's been playing good in the outfield, other than the one clank out there today. I think he had his bat instead of his glove." - Ron Gardenhire, on Skinny Delmon

Suck-Ass Performance of the Game: Nick Blackburn (2.2 innings pitched, 10 hits, 1 walk, 5 earned runs, 1 loss)