The Twins gave that one away.

In saying that, I don't mean to imply that they don't care or that they weren't trying.  Absent evidence to the contrary, I assume every player out there is giving their best effort and wants to win.  What I mean is that this was a game the Twins should've won, and they didn't win it.  And that hurts, because there aren't that many games that the Twins really should win.  You hate to see them give one of them away.

The Twins continue to not be able to score runs.  They certainly had their chances.  When you get seven walks, you ought to be able to score a few runs.  The Twins went 2-for-12 with men in scoring position, and one of the two hit didn't score a run.  Dick Bremer kept talking about how Phil Hughes fell apart so quickly, and that's true, but overall he pitched all right, and there's no way the game should've still been 1-0 at that point.  I have to blame this one on the offense, rather than on Hughes.

The Twins had a chance in the seventh.  Trailing 3-1, their first three batters hit the ball very hard, cutting the lead to 3-2.  Parmelee doubled off Scott Downs.  Kelvin Herrera came in, and Nunez and Santana greeted him with sharp singles.  And then Fuld bunted.

It was a good bunt, I'll give him that.  But the bunt made no sense to me.  I said so at the time (you can ask Mrs. A), so this is not a second-guess after I know the result.  I know it moves the go-ahead run into scoring position, and I know the three and four batters were coming up.  But it wasn't exactly Oliva and Killebrew in the three and four spots.  You had the relief pitcher on the ropes and Gardy chose to give him an out and a chance to recover.  And recover he did.  Dozier and Willingham looked helpless against him, waving weakly at a few pitches to strike out.  The only way having Fuld bunt made sense is if you assumed he couldn't hit Herrera anyway, so he might as well move the runners up.  And maybe he couldn't, but he couldn't have looked any worse than Dozier and Willingham did.  As Dick Bremer likes to say, the bunt was the key to the inning.

Over the course of the season, every team is going to have some frustrating losses.  It's just that, when you don't get that many chances to win anyway, giving a game away is even more frustrating.  But one of the best things about baseball is that there's another game today.  Kevin Correia tries to show that his last outing was an aberration.  He'll face someone called Yordano Ventura, who I can't remember ever hearing of despite the fact that he's been in the Royals rotation all year and he actually faced the Twins once this season, in April.  Ventura actually looks pretty good, although he's been a little shaky lately.  Looks like another low-scoring game, but this time the Twins will be on the winning side.  It's time to start that season-ending fifty-six game winning streak.  We'll just have to settle for 104-58!