The offensive outbursts that have characterized the Twins’ past two games came to a screeching halt tonight as they lost to the Rangers 10-1. The Twins were haunted by Rangers starter Sidney Ponson who threw a complete game. The Twins released Ponson just about a year ago.
The only run the Twins came in the 6th when after Adam Everett tripled to lead off the inning, he was driven home by an Alexi Casilla sacrifice fly. The Twins were only able to muster 6 hits aganist Ponson all game.
Nick Blackburn started off very strong, shutting down the Rangers through the first 5 innings, however that ended in the 6th. He started off the inning by allowing a solo home run to Michael Young and ended it by striking out Young, but that was just after he gave up a 3 run homer to Ian Kinsler. In all he surrendered 7 runs, but through an odd twist only one of those was scored as an earned run, due to an error by Casilla.
This was just one of those games where nothing seemed to go right. Blackburn started the 6th with the homer, then let the game get away from him. However, he is still young and as he gets more and more experience, he will learn to shake off those misfortunes and in a future start might lock down the opponent and not let everything slip away.
