The Good, Bad and Ugly of a Twins Loss

The Good: Trevor Plouffe continues to swing a hot bat. His solo shot in the 2^nd inning last night amounted to what would be the only Twins run in a 6-1 loss to the Phillies. Plouffe has now homered in 3 straight games and is slugging an out of this world .950 in June. As an added bonus, Plouffe has also been playing very strong defense at third base for the Twins. He has yet to make a throwing error at third this season.

The only person that is hampered by Plouffe’s sudden breakout (other than Twins opponents) is Danny Valencia. Since being demoted, Valencia has struggled with a batting average around .220 – with Plouffe playing as well as he has, Valencia isn’t coming back to the majors anytime soon.

The Bad: The Twins broke their streak of 4 straight series wins by dropping last night’s game 6-1. Starting pitching, which had been much improved during those series wins, takes most of the blame for the two losses against Philadelphia. PJ Walters and Jeff Manship combined to give up 6 early runs on Wednesday night, creating a hole the Twins offense could not climb out of. Thursday, Scott Diamond was struggling with control issues early on and allowed the Phillies to climb to an early 4-1 lead.

Honorable mention for “the bad” goes to last night’s offense. Coming into the game, Joe Blanton had averaged 5 earned runs per start this season. Conversely, Scott Diamond was only yielding 1 earned run per game. If you would have told most Twins fans last night’s final score, I believe a large majority would have assumed that was a 6-1 Twins win. The offense should have gotten more against the hittable Blanton, but failed to do so.

The Ugly: Jim Thome’s numbers against the Twins. Thome has 61 career home runs versus Minnesota – which is the most for any opponent AND Thome’s 24 career home runs at Target Field is a record for any player. Simply put – Thome is a Twins killer. Thome drove in 9 RBI during this series, which was also a personal best for the slugger.

Jim Thome is a Twins’ fan favorite – but he sure hurts the home team when he’s not in the Minnesota uniform.

Looking Forward: The Twins start a three game series against the slumping Brewers tonight at 7:10 PM. Francisco Liriano (1-7 6.45 ERA ) takes the mound for the Twins and looks to extend his strong start streak to 4 as he faces off against Yovani Callardo (5-5 4.21 ERA) of the Brewers. Saturday’s game, which starts at 1:10 PM, is a matchup between Michael Fiers (1-2 4.50 ERA) of the Brewers and a player TBD by the Twins (Likely Liam Hendriks).

With two tough matchups against the Reds and Pirates coming up, the Twins need to get wins against teams like the Brewers. This series will do a lot for setting the tone of the team for the next few weeks. Another series win and the “can they contend?” questions will continue. Another series loss and the team may have to finally admit to being sellers at the deadline.