At the beginning of the series, I said that I expected the Twins to take 3 out of 4 — that they should take 3 of 4 from Oakland. I would like very much for Nick Blackburn and the offense to prove me correct this afternoon. You can spin the A’s anyway you want, but the bottom of their batting order during this series should give anyone the cringes (even compared to what the Twins have used at times), and they should feel pretty fortunate for the 60 games of good pitching that their young staff has put together. If their pitching falters, it’s going to be a long summer at the ballpark of empty seats. Where would Jack Cust, their .231 batting No. 3 hitter, bat in the Twins’ order?

In fact, the distressing thing about last night’s victory was the difficulty Francisco Liriano had with the bottom of the Oakland order, which is what turned a potentially dominating performance into a pretty good one.

But one of the good takeaways from the game was the bullpen’s collective three innings of one-hit relief, with the blemish being the meaningless two-out double by Jason Giambi. (Rajai Davis wasn’t going to come close to Joe Nathan in that ninth-inning at-bat.)

Another thing that stood out: We’re really not in the habit of crediting opponents because we expect the Twins to prevail under any circumstance, but I was really impressed with Dallas Braden, the Oakland starter. He seemed to have the Twins figured out — and used what he learned the first time through the order to his advantage for the rest of the night. I wonder if Liriano noticed that and asked him out for coffee after the game. I would also have loved to listen to Brendan Harris’ internal soundtrack as Braden put him through three hellish at-bats, which had something to do with the glee Harris showed when he finally whacked that RBI single in the ninth.

Consecutive road victories, even three of them if things go as they should today, don’t undo the areas in which the Twins need to improve for the final 100 games. For now, Gardy has to solve his second-base dilemma –  Tolbert or Casilla or that Punto fella. The choice will be made among three guys who are barely hitting their weight: Combined weight 555, combined batting average .558. (How’s that for heavy statistical analysis?) It does seem like Casilla has managed to play his way back to Rochester
again, which wouldn’t have been expected when he was recalled after Punto went DL.

Down the road are all the other things we’ve been talking about.

One other number you may want to ponder: Joe Crede’s last 30 home runs have come against right-handed pitching — including nine this season, all 17 in 2008 and the four that he hit during his very brief 2007 season. His slugging percentage is .514 against right-handers this season and .346 against lefties. Last year, it was .561/.146. Just one more thing to ponder before game time.

Enjoy the day.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 11th, 2009 at 9:18 am and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.