The Twins last season beat the woeful Chicago White Sox in 12 of 13 meetings. But on Monday they got a taste of their own medicine after the South Siders blasted three home runs and got six innings of shutout baseball from former Twins pitcher Martin Perez in the 9-0 win.
After being swept by the Cardinals over the weekend, the Twins find themselves still winless at 0-4. The other winless major league teams are the Atlanta Braves and Milwaukee Brewers. The undefeated teams are the Dodgers, Padres and Yankees as of this writing.
The Twins are nowhere close to those clubs because they have scored only six runs in four games. Do the math. They also eked out just two sad hits in Monday’s loss.
Making matters worse, starter Chris Paddack was terrible. He served up all nine runs on six hits, including the three dingers, and walked four batters in three-plus innings. He’s got some work ahead of him because his ERA is now 24.30.
Nobody is hitting, save for Willi Castro. Remember Ty France and the spring he had? He’s now hitting .071. Sheesh.
This Twins fan might be panicking. But Twins manager Rocco Baldelli is not.
“I’ve said this a few times, and I know it’s not the most enticing thing to hear: We are four games in,” Baldelli told MLB.com. “It’s been a challenging four games, no doubt. There’s no way around it, but we have guys that are going to hit their stride and they’re going to play great baseball. We have not done it to this point, but we have the guys to do it.”
Extra innings..
-The loss to the Pale Hose hurt in more ways than one. Not only did Perez blank his former team for six innings with nine strikeouts, former Twins outfielder Michael A. Taylor hit a two-run home run.
-Castro is one of the few Twins hitting at the moment and he also pitched a scoreless eighth inning in Monday’s loss.
-The sweep at the hands of the Cardinals was capped by a 9-2 win on Sunday. Starter Bailey Ober struggled, serving up eight runs in two-plus innings. And then we learn after the game that he was still recovering from the flu. So why have him pitch at all?
Here’s what Rocco had to say to MLB.com.
“We discuss everything so yes [we discussed it],” Baldelli said, “but it’s not something that we were close to doing. We weren’t going to pull him out of the start unless there was a legitimate reason why and we felt confident that he shouldn’t be pitching. That wasn’t the case.”
Lame. That doesn’t hold water for me. Reliever Randy Dobnak pitched in long relief (and was designated for assignment for his troubles) following Ober’s exit, so why not go with a bullpen day on the mound? Especially if the bullpen is that deep. That’s costing us a potential win, Rocco.
-Simeon Woods Richardson gets the ball Tuesday.