(Settling into) The Noose

The noose that I suggested the Twins were trying to slip is now fitted firmly around their necks, and their only way out is to somehow pull off four consecutive victories against the defending champions.

They dropped tonight’s tilt in Brantford by a score of 14-2 – it was a great game for most of it; the wheels came off in the bottom of the eighth when the Twins surrendered 10 (ten!) runs, putting it far out of reach.

In that eighth inning (as will be documented in game story, to be posted soon on the Twins’ site), Mike Bonnano was put in to do mop-up duty and he was just all over the place – at one point, the bases were loaded and all three runs scored on passed balls. Not pretty.

Other than that one inning, the Twins absolutely showed up tonight – in terms of defense and pitching, at least. They kept it close; it was a 1-run game for a lot of it and only a 2-run game as of the sixth inning. The big problem, though, was that the bats just would not come around – they couldn’t get hits in key situations, and they ran themselves into a lot of stupid outs (Brendan Emmett making the third out stealing third; Branson Joseph hosed at the plate on a hopeless send; Jonathan Slattery picked off second to end an inning).

Bonnano being put into the game was more or less a waving of the white flag of sorts. After the game, coach Held conceded that he was basically out of options. The only real bullets he had left in his chamber were Derek Gordon and Adam Banski, both of whom will be needed at full capacity for Wednesday’s elimination game (although they’re all elimination games from here on out, which is obviously a bit of a problem).

Held obviously had no intention of taking Bonnano out of the game – I wonder just how long it could have gone on for – and I suppose that’s fine. It must have been a bit demoralizing for the players on the field – and Bonnano himself – to have to string it out, but what other options were there? Throw in another position player and hope he gets better results? I suppose that was one of them, but in the grand scheme of things it’s hardly a debate worth having.

But really, in case I’ve overlooked it – this was, up to the eighth, an absolute jewel of a game and I had a blast watching it in the Brantford press box with some IBL lifers who really knew their stuff and had a ton of knowledge to share about the league.

So, then, to the future we now look. And the view isn’t pretty – I don’t really care to research the exact percentage chance that teams down 3-0 in best of sevens have of coming back, but we can all imagine it’s a very low one. I’ll say this for the Twins, though: the Boston Red Sox in 2004 had a far lower chance of coming back against New York than Mississauga does against Brantford, and we all know how that one turned out (or we shouldn’t be reading a baseball blog if we don’t, anyways).

And dammit, the Twins have been so frustratingly close. Surely, surely, surely, if the baseball gods have any sense of justice whatsoever, they manage to rattle off a win or two in this series. It’s true – it would require the full wrath and fury of the baseball gods being directed at the Red Sox for the Twins to come back and win this thing, but a few wins hardly seem out of the question.

Anyways, I guess we’re standing on the abyss – I’ll be back on Wednesday with coverage of game four, and with any luck there’ll be a fifth one. Stay tuned!