Punchless Twins Look for Great Escape

The linescore on futility is: 2-3-1-1.

The Minnesota Twins may have escaped the contraction gallows, but they are being carved up by Angel pitchers.

The above numbers represent seven runs in four games, and it doesn’t take banker owner Carl Pohlad to conclude that’s a certain barometer of deflation.

Put it this way:

The new labor agreement insures the Twins survival through 2006, but they are about to be eliminated from the American League’s championship series.

It could happen today.

The Twins trail the best-of-seven series three games to one and must snap the Angels’ three-game winning streak today to take it back to Minnesota.

Far from a snap the way they’re hitting.

In Game 4, as rookie John Lackey made his first start in 16 days for the Angels, the Twins collected three hits in seven shutout innings against Lackey and six hits in all, losing 7-1.

They are now batting .217 against the Angels after winning the American League Central with a .272 team average, and their Saturday night clubhouse was a warehouse of varied rationale and bravado.

There was Torii Hunter, for instance, complaining about how the Angels are getting a lot of bloop hits of the type that are eluding the Twins.

There was slump-buried leadoff man Jacque Jones blaming himself for his failure to ignite the offense, and there was Doug Mientkiewicz saying the Twins have gotten away from their offensive approach and some of that is because Lackey and the Angel pitchers have kept them off balance.

“We’ve got our butts whipped,” Mientkiewicz said. “We haven’t lost it, they’ve taken it, but we’ve faced elimination before against two of the best pitchers in the league [Oakland’s Mark Mulder and Tim Hudson] and survived. We have to sleep fast, forget what’s happened and start all over. We can win three in a row just like they have, but we have to come out loose and crazy. If we can get it to 3-2 we’ll feel we have a chance because we’ll be going back to the Metrodome, and everybody knows how tough we are there.”

The Twins may know how to get to the Metrodome, but loose and crazy?

Their desperation had reached such depths in the seventh inning that Cristian Guzman attempted to drag bunt with two strikes and missed, becoming one of Lackey’s seven strikeouts.

That desperation can also be measured by the fact that Mientkiewicz was saying that his team may have learned a lesson in the ninth inning when two hits led to the Twins’ only run in that “we were reminded that we just have to go up there relaxed and let it fly. I think we’re all trying to be heroes, trying to get the big hit, but it’s hard to get a clutch hit when there’s two out and nobody on base.”

Besides, Mientkiewicz said, there are certain truths about the Minnesota offense. The Twins were ninth in the league in runs and eighth in home runs, and generally, he said, they have to go about it with the same situational approach that the Angels do.

“We’re not going to get 15 hits a game,” the first baseman said. “We know we don’t have one of the best offensive teams. Our pitchers have to pitch their brains out to win, and they have all year. Four runs shouldn’t be too much to ask.”

So far, it’s one more than the Twins have scored in any of the four games with the Angels, and Mientkiewicz said he felt especially sad for ace Brad Radke, who matched Lackey’s shutout through six innings before the Angels scored twice in the seventh.

Radke has been an Angel nemesis, and this was the game the Twins thought would get them even in the series, but they credited Lackey’s cut fastball and precise control (“he was always on the corner,” third baseman Corey Koskie said) and Mientkiewicz added that catcher Bengie Molina was part of it. “He did a hell of a job keeping us off balance. Every time we looked inside they threw outside, and every time we looked outside they threw inside,” Mientkiewicz said.

Of course, that’s a sure sign of a mentally frustrated team. Consider that All-Star Hunter is batting .214, that Koskie, the No. 3 hitter, set an ALCS record with his sixth consecutive strikeout in the first inning and that Jones, the leadoff man, is hitting (so to speak) .059 with one hit in his last 22 postseason at-bats. The Twins have not homered in the series, have struck out 35 times in four games and have drawn only five walks.

Jones, the former USC standout, offered a mea culpa.

“I think we need to ... I’ll say that I need to do a better job of jump-starting our offense. I haven’t done anything to help our team win. If anybody needs to be blamed it should be me. I’m the leadoff hitter. It’s my job to get on base and kick-start our offense. I’m just not doing it.”

Well, said Hunter, putting another spin on it, “we’re just not as lucky as those guys. Those guys are getting bloop hits to get them going and we’re not even getting those bloop hits.”

Hunter acknowledged that Angel pitchers have done a good job of preventing hits of any kind, but that it was tough to watch Scott Spiezio collect a bloop double that scored the second Angel run “when we can’t get that.”

Mientkiewicz agreed that Spiezio has found the “Bermuda Triangle down the first-base line” a couple of times, but then Mientkiewicz himself greeted the indomitable Francisco Rodriguez with a bloop double to center to open the eighth, when the score was only 2-0, but was left stranded as Rodriguez struck out two of the next three Twins.

“I was determined to get a hit even if they brought Bob Feller out of the bullpen,” Mientkiewicz said.

Who doesn’t look like Bob Feller to the Twins?