A New Nemesis Emerges, Creating a New Pair of Delmons
16 May 2009 by sirsean
This post was supposed to be about Justin Morneau hitting two home runs on his birthday.
It was supposed to be about Mauer getting his fifth homer, which he didn't do last year until July 12.
It was supposed to be about Liriano struggling but battling through command problems to get through 6 innings while giving up only one run.
Instead, it's about our two new Delmons in the outfield, our new nemesis, and a blown save by Nathan.
Crain pitched the 7th inning, and actually looked pretty good until the Twins' new nemesis -- Brett Gardner -- came to the plate and blooped a single down the left field line. Denard Span ran toward it, then slowed down at the last second and didn't make much of an attempt to field it, just flailing his glove at the ball lamely as it scooted on by him. He then overshot by several feet and bounced against the wall, despite the fact that he was moving slowly to begin with. He Delmoned* Gardner's single into an inside the park home run. Crain then fell apart, and had to be replaced by Mijares, who barely got out of the inning.
* I like this verb. I'm going to start using it.
It wouldn't have been so bad ... we ended up taking a 4-2 lead into the 9th. But Gardner led off that inning too, and lined a single to right center. Gomez for some reason just slapped the ball as he ran past it, leaving Cuddyer to hunt down the immobile ball sitting near the warning track and get it back into the infield. Gomez had played Gardner's single into a triple.
Nathan couldn't get anybody out. We lost the game 5-4 after intentionally walking Robinson Cano (for some reason) so we could face Melky Cabrera. Nathan threw 27 pitches, after having thrown a lot of innings over the past week. He probably needs a couple of days off, so hopefully we can win big a couple of times.*
* Heh. Yeah right.
In case you wanted to know what a game turning against us once we have it in the bag looks like, here's a picture:
Games like this feel devastating, and seem like they should be right up on the list of painful losses. But all losses are painful, and we've pulled out some unlikely wins ourselves over the last few days. That kind of thing tends to even out, and this time it just happened rather quickly. These games will happen. It hurts, but we just have to come out the next day and play better. The team simply can't afford to get down right now.
Though it'd be nice to start winning in New York.
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