Yankee Stadium: Unkind

With the loss last night, the Twins are now 3 for their last 26 at Yankee Stadium. That's really annoying because the games against the Yankees are about the only ones I get to watch on TV, so I usually wind up watching a bunch of clunkers. This series, despite the four losses, was not bad, and the Twins were quite unlucky to come away with zero wins. The Yankees won the four games by a combined 5 runs, and the first 3 of them were in walk-off style.

Monday's game was another tough loss, as the Twins battled back from an early hole to bring the go-ahead run to the plate in the ninth inning. After Glen Perkins was unable to throw effectively at all, R.A. Dickey replaced him and performed admirably, which afforded the Twins the opportunity to mount a comeback. He threw 4 1/3 scoreless innings, and was followed by Luis Ayala, Craig Breslow, and Jesse Crain. All told, the bullpen gave up only one run on Mark Teixeira's second homer in 7 1/3 innings.

Before Perkins imploded, the Twins had already taken a 2-0 lead on RBI singles by Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau. Morneau would go on to collect four hits, including two doubles, and Denard Span hit his second home run of the year. Span also picked up an RBI single on a soft liner that Derek Jeter terribly misjudged. I'll take any chance to mock Jeter's extremely overrated fielding but this time it was completely deserved.

Carlos Gomez had himself a nice game, going 2-3 with a hit by pitch and a walk. So many times I'd seen Gomez come up way overanxious in close and late situations, but in this game he worked a 7-pitch walk with 2 outs in the ninth inning. It was very impressive to see him lay off pitches in that high pressure situation, especially when it stood in stark contrast to his overagressiveness in the seventh inning when the bases were loaded. Mike Redmond, though, followed up with a ground out in his pinch-hitting appearance for Nick Punto to end the game. By the way, I definitely agreed with the decision to bring Redmond in to pinch-hit, but it was unfortunate that he was the best option.

No matter how you look at it, a 4-game sweep at the hands of the Yankees is always tough to live down, but the close games the Twins played made it both harder to stomach and more encouraging. Hopefully they can put it together for an entire game as they move to Chicago to face the other team I hate, the White Sox.