NEW YORK — I wrote about the absurdity of it all — three consecutive walk-off defeats and a 3-22 regular season record at old and new Yankee Stadium since 2002 — in this story.

For more on Joe Mauer’s game-saving play and LHP Sean Henn’s potential promotion from Class AAA Rochester, click here. And for more impressions of Yankee Stadium, click here.

But I ran out of space to mention a key point Manager Ron Gardenhire made after Sunday’s game.

In the eighth inning, the Twins had the bases loaded with two outs when journeyman reliever Brett Tomko fell behind in the count to Matt Tolbert 2-0. Tolbert fouled out to the catcher on the next pitch, which was high and would have been Ball 3.

This came after Mark Teixeira robbed a run-scoring hit from Denard Span with his diving stop and throw home from his knees.

Then, in the 10th inning, Carlos Gomez worked into a 2-0 count against Alfredo Aceves, and popped up to first base on the next pitch.

“We’re just going to have to start giving the take sign,” Gardenhire said. “You want them to understand the game and not be robots. That’s what this game’s all about, but it happened two or three times today, where we’re 2-0 counts. We need to get a guy on base, and we swing and pop it up.

“That can’t keep happening. You give them leeway and then you have to start telling them this is what we’re gong to do. Those are the disappointing parts of this, but we’ve gotta learn from it. So we’ll talk to them, like we always do. Continue to make them understand the game of baseball.”

Gardenhire noted that Gomez not only swung at the 2-0 pitch but “almost fell down doing it.”

It reminded me of a quote I saw Friday at the Yankee museum.

“I swing big with everything I’ve got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can.” — Babe Ruth

Note: I’m doing a live chat today at noon. Here’s the link. Stop by with your questions, and please, bring some sanity. I know people are worked up about the three gutwrenching games against the Yankees, but you can’t pin the losses on one or two individuals, especially the pitchers who gave up the walk-off hits. Keep in mind, the Twins are 1-for-25 with runners in scoring position in this series.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 18th, 2009 at 8:51 am and is filed under Twins thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.