OCTOBER 9, 2009 -- NEW YORK 4, MINNESOTA 3 (11 innings)

Wow. Unbelievable. As I've said before, you can't lose these games unless you try, or unless you're just in a new category of "pathetic" that I'm just unaware of. Leading 3-1 going into the botom of the ninth, Joe Nathan gives up a single and a mammoth home run to Alex Rodriguez to give up the lead, and then Mark Teixeira comes back in the 11th inning with the game-winning homer off Jose Mijares. Ron Gardenhire didn't do anything during the game that lost the game outright; rather, it was his filling out the lineup that lost the game for the Twins on Friday. I think I thought out loud at least three times as to why Carlos Gomez is even on a major-league roster, much less in the starting lineup in a playoff game. The guy is such absolute doggie do-do that it's hilarious that people actually give the Twins a chance in this series. If I would have known that Gomez would have played Friday, I might as well have just slept through it. Unbelievable that Ron Gardenhire is that stupid. Manager of the Year my ass.


What's even funnier than that is that Brendan Harris propelled the Twins to what would have been a win, and Harris wasn't even in the starting lineup -- Matt Tolbert was, of course. It had to take a pulled muscle to get Tolbert out of the game, and there was Harris, providing the go-ahead triple in the sixth, the key hit to set up the two-run eighth for the Twins, and chipping in on defense with a miraculous Web gem later in the game. The bottom three guys in the Twins lineup -- Gomez, Tolbert, and Punto -- that's Washington Nationals "bad", Pittsburgh Pirates "bad." And you still should have won the game -- unreal. I'll give Punto props, as he delivered a clutch two-out hit in the eighth to put the Twins on top (that hit will probably keep him around for another four years). But I'm not giving Ron Gardenhire props, who I hope was joking when he told TBS reporter/snappy dresser Craig Sager that Punto was "the second best athlete on the team" next to Joe Mauer. That quote prompted me to look up the word 'athlete' in the dictionary, because I don't think Gardy and I are on the same page so to speak. Here it is from dictionary.com:


ath⋅lete 
–noun
a person trained or gifted in exercises or contests involving physical agility, stamina, or strength; a participant in a sport, exercise, or game requiring physical skill. (my emphasis)


OK -- so it doesn't necessary say they have to be good at sports, but merely a participant. But using the modifier "second best" implies that they are good at a particular sport, which just seals the deal -- Ron Gardenhire is the most idiotic, demented, insane man in the game of baseball. If you can hit .220 and play average defense, kids, you're a gold medalist in one man's book. Wow.


Let's get back to Gomez, who was the clear goat in the game. The guy can flat out fly, which was apparently the reason (defense, Gardy'd say, too) that he is even on the postseason roster. Yet Gomez is one of the absolute worst baserunners I've ever seen in my life, and that stupidity cost the Twins a run in the fourth inning. Tolbert actually came through with a hit off Yankee starter A.J. Burnett, sending Seldom Young home with the first run of the game. But wait -- Gomez tripped over his own shoes rounding second and was tagged out trying to go back to second before Young touched home plate, thereby nullifying the run scoring. Just an idiotic turn of events there -- Gomez should be trotting into second base and planting himself there. You're not going first to third there in a million years (I suppose the moronic Gomez probably thought he could), and at the very least, force a run-down so you ensure that the run scores. That blunder was basically the difference in the game, as Gomez proved to everyone, this time on a national scale, that he doesn't belong in the big leagues. But at least Gomez acknowledged his error in a postgame interview, offering his apologies by saying it was "my bad." Oh, OK. I needed that, Carlos.


But that wouldn't be enough for a guy who sucks as bad as Gomez. He had to come through again in the 11th inning, when the Twins started the inning with three straight singles. Seldom Young lined out on the first pitch he saw from reliever David Robertson; that's to be expected from Seldom. Then Ron Gardenhire has Carlos Gomez hit for himself. Huge mistake, Gardy. I'll quote myself from my Doghouse post on Gomez that I wrote way back in June: "This is what Gomez means to me: if the Twins are down by a run in the late innings and the tying run is on third base with one out, Gomez is the last hitter I want at the plate. I'd rather have a pitcher at the plate -- Kevin Slowey, Nick Blackburn, Joe Nathan, hell, even Nick Punto. Gomez folds in the clutch like it's nobody's business, and it's the listless hitting approach and non-existent instincts that make him a Doghouse Denizen for life." Pretty much the same scenario, except that the Twins were tied and would have gone ahead if Gomez can just get the ball in the air. Nope. Instead, he takes one of the most pathetic swings I've ever seen in my life and taps out to first base, and Teixeira throws home to force the runner. Harris flew out after Gomez, and Teixeira would end the game leading off the bottom half of the eleventh. Hooray, Ron Gardenhire! That stroke of managerial prowess lost you another game in the Bronx!


I would like to add that right field umpire Phil Cuzzi delivered one of the absolute worst calls I've ever seen in my life in the eleventh, such a bad call that it makes Mike Muchlinski's infamous home-plate call to end the Oakland Disaster look like a great call. I've always wondered why MLB has outfield umpires in the playoffs; it seems to me that it just means that two more umps can get the calls wrong. Cuzzi is literally fifteen feet away from watching Joe Mauer's fly ball land at least two feet fair and he calls it foul. What's more, outfielder Melky Cabrera touched the ball with his glove! The guy is planted stationary on the field watching nothing but the foul line, and he still gets it wrong. It's just like Richie Garcia's vomit-inducing call in the '96 ALCS when he said that Jeffrey Maier didn't lean over the fence and turn a fly ball into a home run -- the only thing that these outfield umps can do is screw up calls. Now, a lot of people are going to look at that call and do a Gardy and blame the loss on the umpires, but it's hard to tell what would have happened if Mauer had been on second base. Jason Kubel probably would have been trying to "get the guy over to third," i.e. pull the ball on the right side of the infield, and who knows if he would have gotten a hit or not. It likely would have still been up to Seldom Young and Carlos Gomez to blow it in the clutch. And there's no excuses to leaving SEVENTEEN guys on base. But Phil Cuzzi -- jeez, are you that much a Yankee fan or are you simply blind?
Photos: (1,3) AP/Julie Jacobson; (2,4) AP/Kathy Willens; (5) Reuters Pictures

OCTOBER 2, 2009 -- MINNESOTA 10, KANSAS CITY 7

They wouldn't be the 2009 Twins if they don't let a game against the 95-loss Royals in which they led by ten runs get far too interesting, as Kansas City scores the final seven runs in the ballgame but still loses by three. It was all probably a ploy to allow Joe Nathan to break the Twins' single-season saves record with his 46th save of the season, one-upping ex-Twins great Eddie Guardado's mark set in 2002. Though it got much too tense than it should have late in the ballgame, a win's a win, especially considering that Jake Peavy went out for the White Sox and totally dominated Detroit, and the Twins are still alive and kicking, one game out with two to go. If the Twins are to win both games against KC (a tough task considering they've drawn Zach Greinke today), Detroit will have to also win out to take the division without a one-game playoff. The scenario is so eerily similar to 2006, when the Tigers struggled for the last month of the season and limped into the playoffs while the Twins had been the hot team, getting into the playoffs on a high. As things often go, those patterns didn't stay true to form, as Detroit was the team that turned it on in the playoffs, getting to the World Series, and the Twins' season, which for all intents and purposes had ended on the last day of the regular season considering the lack of effort they gave forth in the ALDS against Oakland, was a stupendous flop for me. If the Twins win the division, they're going to celebrate their asses off, and then likely play some of the most embarrassing baseball anyone's ever seen against the Yankees. The biggest problem of this franchise is its mindset -- that a Central Division title is the end-all goal. That mindset owes a whole lot to its major endorser -- Ron Gardenhire.

As for Friday's contest, it appeared that the game was over by the second inning. Royals starter Lenny DiNardo was knocked out early after surrendering a Seldom Young grand slam in the first inning, among six hits he gave up in an inning-plus of work. Jason Kubel notched his 25th home run of the season in the 4th inning, and the entire Twins offense was clicking. In a trip back to simpler times, every Twins starter had at least one hit except Nick Punto, who so often loves being the exception to the rule offensively. Even Matt Tolbert got two hits, making it that much more possible that Ron Gardenhire decides to have a little more confidence in the Punch-and-Judy-meister. Jeff Manship got his first major league win, silencing those doubts as to why a guy who's pitched like regurgitated pumpkin seeds in the big leagues is pitching with the season on the line. The bullpen made it interesting, as always, as the vaunted combo of Crain-Mahay-Keppel allowed the Royals back in the game. On a side note, why is Bobby Keppel in the major leagues? This guy is such absolute garbage is hard to understand how he could make the St. Paul Saints or the Wichita Wingnuts, let alone a major-league roster, let alone a "contending" major league club. Remember the Oakland Disaster? The one game the Twins will look back on after this season and say, "why couldn't we keep a ten-run lead against a last place club?" Well, Keppel was a big part of that, and that question was nearly asked again on Friday, but luckily for the Twins, they held on, and, like Maxwell House, they're in it 'til the last drop.

Photos: AP/Jim Mone

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009 -- TORONTO 3, MINNESOTA 2

So the Royals do the unthinkable and sweep the Tiggers, and the Twins are able to gain one whopping game off their insurmountable lead because they lose two very winnable games against the lackluster Blue Jays. In a dastardly twist of fate, they actually win the game that they virtually should have no chance to win -- the game that Roy Halladay started. Continually the Twins have frustrated their fans by juxtaposing huge, seeming momentum-building wins with pathetic, effortless losses to the hands of Brett Cecil and company. On Thursday, the Twins get yet another solid start from Scott Baker, but the offense falls asleep against southpaw Cecil, and the Toronto bullpen slams the door on any potential comeback. Five and a half games back with twenty-two games left -- dare I say they need a 9-0 homestand to make things interesting?

The Twins offense sure had their chances, but they were crippled by a lack of two-out clutch hitting (what's new) and weren't helped by the fact that Nick Punto is absolutely dreadful at everything he does in life. Seriously, I'd be surprised if Punto can pee standing up, because everything he does on the baseball diamond is below Little League caliber. Case in point his bunting prowess, which the entire Rogers Centre crowd got to enjoy. In the seventh inning and the Twins down a run, Punto was asked to bunt pinch runner Matt Tolbert to second. Punto, of course, openly defied that command and failed to do the easiest thing in professional sports. He bunted the ball way too hard back to the pitcher, and Jeremy Accardo was easily able to throw out Tolbert at second base. Add Punto's standard failure to get the bunt down with Denard Span's failed sacrifice attempt earlier in the ballgame, and that made it two times that the "fundamentally sound" Twins failed to get down fundamental elements of the game. Especially if your whole team is hitting .237 for the month, you need to do the little things if you want to win these games. Like Michael Cuddyer -- don't ground into double plays just before Seldom Young hits a double! That damn well lost the game for you right there.

The vaunted combo of Blackburn (one win since Ron Gardenhire benched him for ten games straddling the All-Star Break) Manship (Triple-A level pitcher) and Douchebag (Triple-A level pitcher) will be on the hill this weekend whe the Twins face the A's. With Blackburn going tonight, here's hoping there's no redux of the Oakland Disaster.

JULY 26, 2009 -- MINNESOTA 10, LOS ANGELES 1

The Twins exorcise some demons on Sunday, hitting three home runs (two by Justin Morneau) and riding starter Anthony Swarzak to an easy 10-1 win. At this point, the rookie Swarzak is pert' damn near the top starter on this team, and though I mean no disrespect to Anthony, that's not a good thing for the Twins. Nick Blackburn has responded to Ron Gardenhire's extra rest and pitched like a batting practice pitcher since the All-Star break, Francisco Liriano is the same bad pitcher that he was in April, Glen Perkins is probably going to move to the bullpen when Kevin Slowey is ready to come off the disabled list, and Scott Baker has been wildly inconsistent all year long. Twice on the road trip, Swarzak has stepped up and stopped the bleeding; the first in response to the Oakland Disaster, when he pitched seven strong innings and kept the game close enough for the Twins to win in extras, and now on Sunday, when he helped save an overtaxed bullpen by throwing 122 pitches in six plus innings, giving up only four hits and one run to an Angel lineup that had been working on all cylinders. To his credit, Swarzak has shown that he can pitch very much unlike a 23-year old rookie on the mound. He does tend to walk a few more batters than is to be accepted here at the Twins, but other than that, he's been more than adequate as a minor-league call-up; in fact, he's outclassed many of his mates on the pitching staff.


Perhaps the biggest hit in the game on Sunday was a two-out, two-run single by Nick Punto, who snapped a 1 for 18 slump with that single which put the Twins up 4-0. Denard Span would follow a batter later with a two-run single of his own, and the Twins chased Los Angeles starter Ervin Santana in the fourth inning. Punto was twice the beneficiary of poor official scoring on Sunday, but when you're hitting .205 and playing mediocre shortstop, you need all the breaks you can get, or you should hope that some idiot organization would pay you some ridiculous amount of money -- like three, four million dollars a year -- to replicate the same pathetic numbers that you have put up in the past (wait...that last part is actually true; damn you Bill Smith!). In the sixth inning, Punto lifted a medium-deep fly ball (it was almost a line drive -- dare I say Punto sort of hit the ball hard) that Reggie Willits and Gary Matthews Jr. let drop between them (see left), and the play was inexplicably ruled an RBI-double for Punto when in reality that's a ball that needs to be caught every single time. And Punto should have been charged with two errors in the seventh, as he stupidly dropped a routine liner to short stop and made Swarzak have to leave the game instead of completing seven innings; two batters before that, Punto had been charged with an error on a routine throw to first base. It just goes to show you that this is a guy who just can't put one solid all-around game on his resume. He's got to screw up somehow, and when it does happen it's not pretty. I liked Punto's quote after the game, though, when he said that "it's been an inconsistent year for me, to say the least." Inconsistent? No, that's not it; actually, Punto's been a shining example of consistency (consistently pathetic, that is). Inconsistent? Please. I've got another term for it, and it's not exactly PG-rated, buddy.


The Twins now return home to face the Chicago White Sox, fresh off losing three out of four to the Detroit Tigers at Comerica Park. The Twins will be the first team to face Mark Buehrle following his perfect game last week against Tampa Bay, but first they have to deal with John Danks, and unfortunately for the Twins, it appears as if Glen Perkins will pitch tonight. Ron Gardenhire made it seem like Perkins' last start (1 inning pitched, eight earned runs) was because of a bum shoulder, but he's made that excuse a few times this season. Managers shouldn't lie for their players like that -- Perkins has to man up and accept the fact that he sucks, and Ron Gardenhire needs to acknowledge that himself and juggle the rotation to ensure Twins fans that they aren't subject to watching that poor imitation for a pitcher do his "act" in front of tens of thousands of fans.

JULY 25, 2009 -- LOS ANGELES 11, MINNESOTA 5

For the third time in six games, the Twins give up seven-plus runs in an inning -- that's got to be some sort of record for futility, at least a club record or something -- and this time it's a nine-run fourth inning that's the doom of Nick Blackburn and the Twins. I have a sneak feeling that Ron Gardenhire's awesome decision to rest his ace pitcher for a week and a half is still producing terrible results for the Twins, as Blackburn has shown absolutely none of the confidence and poise, not to mention sharp sinkers, that he displayed for most of the first half. Let's not forget that the Angels' nine-run inning was bookended by home runs from power-deficient hitters Chone Figgins and Maicier Izturis, the latter hitting his three-run bomb off R.A. Dickey, who appears to be settling back to his early-season yuckiness. And let's also not forget that the nine-run inning is not the worst inning that a Ron Gardenhire-managed team has had in Anaheim; the last game of the 2002 ALCS featured a ten-run inning that sealed the Angels' first trip and only to the World Series (and it included a guy named Adam Kennedy goin' Reggie Jackson on the Twins' asses), and Ron Gardenhire hasn't been close to the Series since then.


Down 9-2, the Twins did end up scoring three times in the seventh inning and had a bevy of chances throughout the game to make it interesting, but yet again the clutch hitting for the Twins failed them miserably. They went 2 for 12 with runners in scoring position, and seemed to mount a rally every inning but consistently choked with two outs. Spot starter and 30-year old rookie Matt Palmer showed everyone why he's a spot starter and 30-year old rookie, never getting ahead on any hitters and working basically all day out of the stretch. Michael Cuddyer, always the choker in the clutch, fouled out to first base with two on and two out in the first. Denard Span had two terrible at-bats, tapping back to the pitcher with two on and two out in the second and then swinging at two pitches which would have been ball four in the fourth inning -- obviously Span was still thinking that Casilla or Punto were hitting behind him and not Joe Mauer; had Span been smart and taken those pitches, Mauer would have hit with two runners on base. The Twins started the sixth inning with two straight singles and had runners on at first and third and nobody out, but then Brendan Harris flew out, Mike "No Gas Left in the Tank" Redmond struck out and Alexi Casilla -- well, you know what happens when Casilla hits. Failing to score that inning would prove even more costly when the Twins ended up putting three on the board in the seventh (though a bigger inning was prevented when Justin Morneau grounded into a double play with two on and nobody out), but reliever Jose Mijares took care of any "rally" the Twins may have by walking two guys in the eighth and letting both score. To add insult to injury, Michael Cuddyer popped out with a guy on third and one out in the ninth. All in all, it was a pathetic day at the ballpark for the Twins, and because Fox aired the game, the whole country got to see how bad of a team that the Twins really are.


If it weren't for them being in the weakest division in baseball, the Twins would be well out of playoff contention already. As it stands, with the Tigers winning three in a row and the Twins dropping four straight, the Twins are five games out as the trade deadline nears. I've been one who has said that they desperately need bullpen help and also have glaring holes up the middle (like those will be addressed, though). But the way this road trip has gone, I have to agree with the guys over at Fire Gardy when I say that there's no point right now in improving the ballclub. Will a bullpen guy really put this team over the top? And the real fact of the matter is is that the Twins are far from actually contending; by that I mean that even though they still have a shot to win the Central, if they get into the playoffs, how in Sam Hell are they going to compete with the Yankees, Red Sox, and Angels? They're a combined 5-14 against those teams, and there's not even a team on the fringe that the Twins match up well against. If it's just going to be another Ron Gardenhire three-and-done trip to the playoffs, what's the point? They've done that the last three times they've made the postseason, and each time that it happens it hurts a little bit more. The Twins aren't the Royals; a trip to the playoffs would not be an accomplishment in itself. If I'm a player on the Twins (or the manager), I'm not satisfied until I win the World Series. That should be the goal, but unfortunately both the front office and the field staff believe that the Central Divison is the end-all goal for the team. And like Fire Gardy opines, if the Twins aren't buyers at the trade deadline (which they've never been, except for a Phil Nevin here and an Eddie Guardado there), there's not much that the Twins can offer to other teams, either. Four months into the season, the Twins are languishing at two games below .500; frankly I don't see how the team can "turn it on" like everyone thinks they're going to. For the Twins to win 90 games, they'll have to pull off a 42-22 stretch, and I just don't think that's going to happen.


Just one more game to lose here in Anaheim, and then the Twins get to go home and face the White Sox and Angels in a week-long homestand. Anthony Swarzak has been the only starter to pitch well in the past week for the Twins, and he gets the task of getting the Twins off the mat for the second straight start; he was the pitcher who did his job last Tuesday following the Oakland Disaster. He opposes Angel flamethrower Ervin Santana.