So this is what it takes for the Twins to be the lead story on ESPN?

“It’s one of those replays,” said Oakland pitcher Michael Wuertz, “where you’re glad it’s not football.”

Talking head No. 1: “Check this. Cuddyer slides between the pitcher’s legs.”

Talking head No. 2: “Completely safe!”

I’m guessing you’ll be able to see the replay of Michael Cuddyer’s well-advised dash to the plate from second on the two-out wild pitch that should have tied the game — except that Mike Muchlinski, whose regular gig this year has been in the Class AAA Pacific Coast League, was out of position to see that Cuddyer got his leg all the way across home plate before Wuertz applied the tag.

(Time out: Here’s a photo of Muchlinski taken last month during a Cubs-Royals game. That’s the Iowa Cubs and the Omaha Royals.)

As Gardy put it on FSN, after you should have all been asleep:  “I told him (Muchlinski), ‘I don’t think you’re going to like yourself when you see the replay of that.’ He’s a nice man. He worked hard tonight. It was an ugly game to have to umpire. It’s unfortunate that it comes down to a play like that.”

As ESPN’s Buster Olney put it this morning: “In late September, we may look back at that call as being pivotal in the Twins’ season.”

Wait, Buster! The game was lost between the fourth and eighth innings. You don’t go from a 12-2 lead to a 14-13 loss without being a participant in your own execution. Even Gardy knew better than to get too worked up because, when all is accounted for, the Twins embarrassed themselves as much as the umpire did.

As a game-story commenter posted elsewhere on this website: “I’d be embarrassed to be arguing to someone about a blown call after a team just lost a ten run lead. Many of you fans sound like these mighty Twins … pathetic!”

Actually, it was Gardy — in a rare bout of understatement — who did the best job of putting the whole stupid thing in perspective:

“The play was, you know, well uh, uh, definitely Cuddy was safe. We know that. I mean, he slid in. He was safe, there’s no doubt about that. We just had a little bit of a bad call there. But we also shot ourselves in the foot enough out there pitching-wise that it’s hard to point the finger and say, ‘He blew it,’ because we did enough blowing it ourselves.”

The A’s had tried to concede early by letting starter Gio Gonzalez stay in the game until he’d given up 11 runs in 2 2/3 innings. But Nick Blackburn was terrible and the three relievers from Rochester — Duensing, Keppel and Mijares — gave up seven runs on nine hits and three walks in 2 2/3 innings. Mijares, who had given up only three hits to lefties all season, gave up three more last night — including the game-losing home run on a meatball to Jack Cust.

My guess is that many (most?) of you found good reason to turn the game off at some point, owing to the time zone and everything. You should have been able to go to bed confident in a 12-2 lead, and then I could see others turning in at the 13-7 mark because it was getting pretty late. I almost joined that group.

It sure looked like the Twins were going to get away with a “B” lineup that included Nick Punto (three pop-ups, two strikeouts) batting second, Alexa Casilla flailing away at the bottom of the order (two pop outs and a fly out) and Mike Redmond trying to put down his first sacrifice bunt in three years before grounding into an eighth-inning double play (between Brendan Harris’ single and Joe Mauer’s pinch-hit double).

Hey, did anyone else see that second baseman Felipe Lopez went 4-for-4 last night with a walk in his first game with the Brewers? What’s that stat? Value over replacement player?

That’s all from here. Lots of stuff to do today that has nothing to do with baseball, which is a good thing. Go ahead and have at it. Just try to make more sense than Mike Muchlinski and the Twins did last night.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 21st, 2009 at 8:50 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.