Date: 7/7/10

Opponent: Toronto Blue Jays

Home/Away: Away

Starting Pitcher: Slowey

Final Score: L 6-5

Record: 45-39

Recap: Could we be any more mediocre right now? Seriously, what the hell are we doing? As if it wasn't enough to suffer a painful loss in which Slowey and Guerrier couldn't hold any of our 3 leads, we also had the misfortune of having two of the best players on our team get injured in collisions. It was a very frustrating game.

Toronto took an early lead, but Hudson homered in the 4th with Span on base to give the Twins a 1-run lead. Lead Number 1 was blown in the bottom of the inning when Slowey gave up a 2-out single to tie the game at 2 apiece. Then Skinny Delmon homered in the top of the 5th to give us our second lead. Again Slowey gave it back immediately, this time with some assistance. With 2 outs and a man on 1st, Jose Bautista hit a ball deep into the gap in left-center field. Span and Skinny Delmon both went for the ball and naturally they collided. Delmon ended up diving while Span jumped over him, but Span hit Delmon's left wrist. DY stayed in the game, but who knows how injured he is. Anyway, both Span and Skinny Delmon were slow to recover. Span eventually got up and threw the ball back in, but it was too late and Bautista had an inside-the-park home run to give the Blue Jays the lead. Span is an absolute menace in the outfield. He bulldozes everyone in his path. A little communication would be appreciated! If one of them had just backed up the other on the play, we could have at least kept the game tied. So the collision cost us a run, and bye bye Lead Number 2.

The Twins loaded the bases in the 6th and got a run on a sac fly to tie the game. In the 7th, Span singled, and Hudson tripled to give the Twins their third lead. But of course Lead Number 3 lasted no longer than the first two. Slowey allowed a triple with 1 out in the 7th. In came Matt Guerrier, whose appearance on the mound I'm really starting to dread. Guerrier gave up a sac fly (and boy was Gardy pissed about his pitch selection there). With the game tied, the bleeding continued as Guerrier walked the next batter and then surrendered the go-ahead run on a double. Our pitchers clearly need to improve if we expect to win.

The offense was strong again. Hudson was the big hero with a single, triple and homer, driving in 3 runs. Span and Morneau had 2 hits each and Skinny Delmon had a double. Unfortunately, Morneau also had an injury in the game when he took a shin to the head on a takeout slide on a possible double play ball. He had to leave the game because he was dizzy. We've dropped to 3rd place in the division now, but we can still win the series with a good game on Thursday. Let's hope we can pull ourselves together and also hope Morneau and Skinny Delmon are okay to play.

Best Moment: Hudson's home run.

Most Questionable Moment: Span and Young both going for the Bautista's ball in the gap.

Worst Moment: Guerrier giving up the lead and the game.

Quotations of the Day:

• "That's a game that we thought we should have won. You just don't win baseball games like that. You have to go out and shut somebody down. We didn't do enough of that today." - Ron Gardenhire
• "Delmon and Span-Man made a great effort trying to catch that ball, but one of them has to, at least you would think, stop the ball as the other one goes for the catch. But you get two guys going and they almost kill each other." - Ron Gardenhire
• "I feel like this was my game to win. We put up those runs in the fourth and the fifth and gave me an opportunity to go back out there and throw. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get the job done." - Kevin Slowey

Suck-Ass Performance of the Game: Matt Guerrier (0.1 innings pitched, 1 hit, 1 walk, 1 earned run, 1 blown save, 1 loss)