Minnesota Twins Lose Their Home Opener, 8-3
The Minnesota Twins can’t sell beer at Target Field anymore in 2014. Why? They lost the opener. I’m sorry, but I believe we need to laugh through the tears. The Twins lost to the Oakland Athletics 8-3 on Monday to christen Target Field in 2014.
The Twins sent Kevin Correia to the mound and again Correia got bit by the replay bug. In Correia’s first start he faced a long replay delay that allegedly forced manager Ron Gardenhire to pull Correia from the start. Correia faced another long replay and we haven’t had an explanation why the replay took about five minutes.
Let’s set the replay debacle scene: Correia was facing Jed Lowrie and Lowrie forgot the count. He thought he had been walked, but it turned out it was only the third ball of the at-bat, but Lowrie had already taken off all of his leg gear. Lowrie put back on his leg gear and smashed the next pitch he saw down the right field line. It was ruled a foul ball, but many members of the press box thought it was a home run, a replay on FOX Sports North showed it was in fact a foul ball rather quickly, but the replay in New York wasn’t that fast. It was eventually ruled a foul ball, but it still took at least four minutes longer than it should have.
Some could point to this delay to the downfall of Correia’s performance on Monday, but simply put, it didn’t look like Correia had anything going even before the delay. Correia had given up two runs in the second inning and gave up two more in the third immediately after the delay. A Derek Norris solo homerun to center field knocked Correia out of the ballgame. Correia gave up six runs on nine hits, his season ERA now sits at 6.17.
The Twins didn’t score much in the ballgame, scoring all of their runs in the second and third innings. An Aaron Hicks double to deep right center scored Kurt Suzuki to give the Twins their first run in the second inning. In the third a Jason Kubel RBI double and a Suzuki ground out scored two more for the Twins and that’s where the scoring stopped.
Sam Deduno came in for Correia and finished the game out. It wasn’t exactly a marvelous outing at the start for Deduno, giving up two runs in 3.1 innings of work, but it turned out to be an okay day for the long relief man. Deduno committed his second balk of the year and this time it scored a run in the seventh. Later in the same inning he gave up a sac-fly that scored another. Deduno allowed no runs in the eighth and ninth and only allowed one hit and one walk all contest.
Jason Kubel and Aaron Hicks both notched doubles in the game. Kubel, Hicks and Kurt Suzuki lay claim to the three RBI. Pedro Florimon stole a base. Joe Mauer was the only batter to strikeout twice in the ball game.
Twins acquired ex-Yankee shortstop Eduardo Nunez midgame (read about Nunez and the move here).
The Twins and Oakland take Tuesday off and get back at it on Wednesday for a 12:10 game.