A few extra tidbits from the Twins’ 12-5 loss to Oakland (because, really, who could get enough?):

(*) Francisco Liriano, who had been out since Aug. 17 with left arm fatigue, tossed two scoreless innings in his first relief appearance since May 13, 2006. He entered with the Twins trailing 12-1 in the seventh, so it was good time to restore confidence. Rajai Davis hit a leadoff double, but Liriano retired six of the next seven batters, with four strikeouts.

(*) Justin Huber made his Twins debut, replacing Justin Morneau at first base in the seventh inning. Huber singled in his first at-bat before grounding into the game-ending double play. He also made a nice diving stop down the line to stop a hard grounder by Eric Patterson in the eighth, but the speedy Patterson beat Liriano to the bag for a base hit.

(*) Nick Blackburn’s previous two starts had been solid, so he didn’t lump this outing with his other second-half disappointments. “I think I’m over that,” he said. “I think it was just a bad night for me.”

And what went wrong? “I just wasn’t hitting any spots,” he said. “I couldn’t control my off-speed, and I couldn’t throw my fastball where I wanted to. No location. Just a bad night.”

(*) The Twins are 3-5 against Oakland this year, including losses by scores of 12-5, 14-13 and 16-1. The A’s, who entered with the fewest home runs in the American League (118), hit five homers and smashed three other balls off the right-field baggie.

“We proved tonight that Stanley tools can take a beating because our baggie had the living crap beat out of it,” Manager Ron Gardenhire said. “I’m sure Stanley’s happy with that because they got a lot of publicity.”

This entry was posted on Friday, September 11th, 2009 at 11:17 pm 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.