Date: 6/25/10

Opponent: New York Mets

Home/Away: Away

Starting Pitcher: Slowey

Final Score: L 5-2

Record: 40-33

Recap: I know it's only a 4-game losing streak, but we have been playing like we expect to lose. It's pretty painful to watch. Our starting pitchers are getting hammered, our offense is lethargic, and our defense is a bumbling mess. I hope we can figure something out and get on a hot streak, because we need it if we want to stay on top in the division. Yuck.

Anyway, not much to talk about today. Slowey improved on his last start, but it's easy to improve on a 1.2 inning, 7 run start. This time he got through 6 innings, but 5 runs isn't anything to write home about. He wasn't helped any by a couple of errors and other general mistakes. He actually was fine for 3 innings, but he struggled through an ugly 4th which contained a single, errant pickoff throw allowing the runner to advance to 2nd, a sac bunt, then a double, a single with an error by Span allowing a run to score, and then another double. It wasn't fun to watch. The Mets scored 3 in that inning, then tacked on one more in each the 5th and 6th. 

Offensively our only runs were a homer by Span to lead off the game and a RBI ground out by Span that scored Punto. We had a really good opportunity to score a few runs when Span and Hudson led off the 3rd inning with consecutive singles, but Mauer struck out and Morneau bounced into a double play. I think the only bright spot in this stretch of losses has been the bullpen. Cross your fingers and hope we play with a bit of fire tomorrow. Maybe we can get in a brawl or blow some shit up in the dugout. Just something to give some signs of life. It's a day game tomorrow, which has generally not been a good thing for us, but I will keep a positive attitude. For now. Perhaps the Pavstache will get us through this dark stretch.

Best Moment: Span's home run.

Most Questionable Moment: Carlos Zambrano going insane. I guess there's such a thing as too much fire.

Worst Moment: The last two-thirds of the game.

Quotations of the Day:

• "As I told the guys after the game, it's just not working out for us right now. You've just got to play through it. You go through stretches where the ball doesn't go your way, it doesn't bounce your way and when you hit it hard, it seems to be at somebody. It's just happening right now that we're making a couple mistakes where we're shooting ourselves. So we just have to keep playing and work our way through it, get back on the good side." - Ron Gardenhire. I don't really think this is bad luck or the ball not going our way. I feel like we're playing sloppy and lazy right now. But maybe I'm being too cynical.
• "I think everyone in this clubhouse is frustrated, and I would certainly put myself at the top of that list, especially recently. We're disappointed and frustrated, and we know we're better than this, and that goes for me, too." - 
• "When you go through stretches like this and you are complaining about everything, it goes the other way. So we have to be positive about everything. That's what the coaching staff is going to try to do, and the manager, and hopefully that will rub off with the players and we'll go from there." - Ron Gardenhire. The power of positive thinking. I like it. It doesn't really work for me, but maybe I need to try it more often.

Suck-Ass Performance of the Game: Kevin Slowey (6.0 innings pitched, 6 hits, 1 home run, 5 earned runs, 1 loss, 1 error). It was better than last time, but it's still pretty terrible.