Well, so much for my ‘Twins in 4’ prediction. In 18 innings of post-season baseball, Minnesota has not led once. The two runs they scored today came from two huge blasts from Michael Cuddyer and Justin Morneau, who hit the biggest fly ball I’ve ever seen. But that only tied the game, and then Torii Hunter – perennial Gold Glove candidate Torii Hunter – made an error in judgment that can only be considered Cub-like. With one on and two outs, Hunter dove for a sinking fly ball from Mark Kotsay, which skipped past him and rolled all the way to the wall. Kotsay, who has pretty decent wheels, circled the bases for an inside the park home run. Ow.
Here’s how listless the Twins have been: they didn’t even put a runner on base with less than two outs until the tail end of the game. That makes it really hard to manufacture runs when you don’t have any outs to give. The Twins now have to send Brad Radke, who’s pitched only once since August 25, to the mound and save their season. Geez, I bet the White Sox would have put up more of a fight than this.
Game 3: Brad Radke (12-9, 4.31) vs. Danny Haren (14-13, 4.12)
