Crede's Walk-Off Grand Slam Wins It In 13

by Jesse on May 14, 2009 3:38 AM EDT in Game Threads Comment 20 comments

Minnesota Twins' Joe Crede hits a grand slam off Detroit Tigers' Brandon Lyon in the 13th inning of a baseball game Wednesday, May 13, 2009, in Minneapolis where the Twins beat the Tigers 14-10. (AP Photo/Jim Mone)

6 months ago: Minnesota Twins' Joe Crede hits a grand slam off Detroit Tigers' Brandon Lyon in the 13th inning of a baseball game Wednesday, May 13, 2009, in Minneapolis where the Twins beat the Tigers 14-10. (AP Photo/Jim Mone)

Browse more photos »

Offensive middleweights Detroit and Minnesota slugged it out, with the Twins winning it 14-10 in 13 innings.

Things started out scerenely enough. Justin Morneau homered in the first for his ninth of the season, and after three innings the Twins led 3-0. Dontrelle Willis was chased early, lasting just four and two thirds, and Minnesota seemed on their way. Then the skies opened.

The Tigers returned fire, scoring nine runs through the middle innings and led 9-7 through seven full. Glen Perkins' good start turned sour, and he lasted just five and a third while being charged with five runs. He missed his spots and walked four, and walking that many hitters in those few innings is rarely a recipe for success. Jason Kubel's two-run blast in the bottom of the eighth bailed out Perkins and his bullpen, pushing the clubs to a 9-9 tie that would last another five innings.

Curtis Granderson's one-out triple in the top of the 13th off Jesse Crain was an auspicious start to the final frame. The eventual run, the result of a pure lack of fundamentals via a balk, was as embarassing as it was infuriating and demoralizing. It gave the Tigers a 10-9 lead, with Kubel-Span-Tolbert due up in the bottom of the inning.

Kubel led off with a single to get things started quickly. Nick Punto came on to pinch run for the bearded wonder, advancing to second on Denard Span's sacrifice bunt. Matt Tolbert's single scored Punto from second, and just like that the game was tied.

Joe Mauer then grounded out before Morneau was intentionally walked; Michael Cuddyer received a four-pitch walk of the unintentional variety. With the bases loaded, Joe Crede sat on a hanging breaking ball and pulled it into the left field seats.

And the crowd went wild.

It's nice to see the Twins come out on the winning end of games like this, it seems like it hasn't happened often enough this season. The win puts the team back at evens, at 17-17, and hopefully this nice little winning streak can continue with a victory this afternoon to seal the sweep. See you then!

Stars of the Game
#3: Justin Morneau (2-for-6, HR, 2 R, 2 RBI, BB)
#2: Jason Kubel (2-for-3, HR, R, 2 RBI)
#1: Joe Crede (2-for-7, HR, R, 4 RBI)

0 recs | Comment 20 comments | Share

Story-email Email Printer Print

Comments

Our pitching

Uniformly bad.

Our bats, pretty nice.

"You can't sit on a lead and run a few plays into the line and just kill the clock. You've got to throw the ball over the damn plate and give the other man his chance. That's why baseball is the greatest game of them all."
~ Earl Weaver
"In God we trust. All others must provide evidence."
~ Billy Beane

by AdamOnFirst on May 14, 2009 4:07 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Mijares made amends for...

…his awful pitch to Griffey against the Ms, but I don’t know what it is about Crain. Just when you think he’s figured everything out, a screw pops out and he unravels. I guess he had pretty good stuff, but you just knew that somehow Granderson was going cross home plate with Crain out there (although I’ll admit I never imagined it would be a balk—especially with a guy at third only).

Oh well, he go the W, so maybe that will give him a bit of boost.

I like Crede in the lineup because he’s always a threat to take the ball out the yard and you know what you are getting at third base day in and day out.

I usually save my criticism for the homeboys, but I have to say I was stunned when they elected to walk Morneau—sure Morneau is much more likely to go yard, but he is also much more likely to swing at pitches out of the strike zone. I would never elect to put the winning run on second base, and even makes less sense knowing that Cuddyer is more patient than Morneau. It also likely the case that Lyon was gassed.

PS-Who is that Adam Everett guy? He must have come from alien pod.

"I don't think it's nice, you laughin'. See, my mule don't like people laughing. He gets the crazy idea you're laughing at him. Now if you apologize, like I know you're going to, I might convince him that you really didn't mean it . . ."

by Skippy tastes better than Jiff on May 14, 2009 4:21 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Sorry! My bad! I think that both Gamecast and MLB.com...

…got it wrong. Tolbert was already on second when Morneau was walked, wasn’t he? I wonder why that didn’t show up on either version….Did anyone else notice that after Mauer grounded out? Apologies to Detroit’s coaching staff.

ESPN play-by-play still has it wrong:

Minnesota – Bottom of 13th SCORE
Brandon Lyon pitching for Detroit DET MIN
J Kubel singled to right. 10 9
N Punto ran for J Kubel. 10 9
D Span sacrificed to pitcher, N Punto to second. 10 9
M Tolbert singled to left center, N Punto scored. 10 10
J Mauer grounded out to pitcher. 10 10
>>>>>>J Morneau intentionally walked, M Tolbert to second. 10 10<<<<<<<<
M Cuddyer walked, M Tolbert to third, J Morneau to second. 10 10
J Crede homered to left, M Tolbert, J Morneau and M Cuddyer scored. 10 14
5 Runs, 3 Hits, 0 Errors

by Skippy tastes better than Jiff on May 14, 2009 4:37 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Harris continues to smoke the ball.

by Skippy tastes better than Jiff on May 14, 2009 4:42 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

BTW, is anyone else thinking that the Ayala experiment is not...

…yielding the kind of results we were hoping for? Personally, I am ready to give him his freedom.

by Skippy tastes better than Jiff on May 14, 2009 4:51 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Free Willy

And who is going to replace him, pray tell? Why i he better than RA Dickey?

by AdamOnFirst on May 14, 2009 6:20 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Ayala

Gardy needed to get him out of there as soon as we got a lead. Unfortunately, he had used Mijares, Guerrier and Crain together a lot lately. So he probably wanted to get some outs out of Ayala. Didn’t happen. Hasn’t happened since the first week of the year. I don’t know how long his leash is. But if it were up to me, I’d DFA him right now and bring up Swarzak or Slama.

"You're thinking too much. Just have fun." -- Bennie "The Jet" Rodriguez in Sandlot

by cmathewson on May 14, 2009 7:35 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Bullpen

is making these games hard to watch. Any time the Twins have a small lead and its between the 6-8 innings it seems inevitable that it is going to dissapear. Ayala has done nothing but blow saves all year long. His stats show no holds and 3 blown saves. There is no one to blame but Bill Smith who didn’t go out and get a solid type A reliever. Instead he opted for Ayala who was cheap. Now we know that unless our starter goes 8 innings the game is going to be a crapshoot between the 6-8th.

by STLVikesFAN on May 14, 2009 7:52 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

yes Ayala is pretty bad

but you have to admire Bill Smith for getting him because he had faith that Rick Anderson could get him back to his 05-06 form (before TJ surgery). Anderson has done nothing. I would not say that Bill Smith signed him cause he was cheap and didnt sign a type A reliever cause he would have been expensive. Twins lose a draft pick which certainly could provide 10 years of help to the Twins whereas one year of help from a reliever. What would you rather have?

by 33MorneauMVP on May 14, 2009 9:35 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Kubel!

I give Kubel the #1 ranking for the day. PH game tying HR is pretty huge. Crede’s slam was huge too, but he only needed the single, and was 2-7 at the end of the day.

Also – maybe this is the wrong board, but I actually thought that Willis looked pretty decent. Some really hard hit balls, but there were also some bloopers. Mostly, I thought he was around the edges of the strike zone, his balls were close, and most of his strikes were away from the heart of the plate. At the end, his breaking ball started looking good to, with that late release he used to have in FL.

by snolls on May 14, 2009 9:45 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

I'd rather have....

…this lineup. Everyday.

1. CF Span
2. SS Harris
3. C Mauer
4. 1B Morneau
5. DH Kubel
6. RF Cuddyer
7. LF Young
8. 3B Crede
9. 2B Tolbert

Obviously there will be those days that Mauer will sit, and you Gomez lovers need some Carlos time. And I would love to see a reason to put Crede (especially after last nights endearing grand slam) closer to the middle of the lineup. But 9 out of 10 days, this needs to be our lineup.

Period.

by JMurf77 on May 14, 2009 9:47 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

That's a pretty terrible defense

outside of catcher and third base.

by DK on May 14, 2009 11:25 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

and 1B

by 33MorneauMVP on May 14, 2009 11:27 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Nope.

He’s been pretty bad so far this year (UZR/150: -9.7). At best he’s average and declining. And a mediocre-at-best first baseman isn’t going to do much to help the gaping holes in the middle infield and the outfield in that guy’s lineup.

by DK on May 14, 2009 1:44 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

UZR is only part of the story for first basemen

The bigger thing is saving errors by digging out throws in the dirt. Also, there’s an inverse relationship between the range of the second baseman and the first baseman. The first baseman will tend to go to the bag rather than to the ball if he’s confident the second baseman will get to the ball.

"You're thinking too much. Just have fun." -- Bennie "The Jet" Rodriguez in Sandlot

by cmathewson on May 14, 2009 2:16 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I agree here with cmath

I play first base so I know a little bit about this. Frankly, I dont put a whole lot on range factor for first basemen cause they do break to the bag more often than going after a ball hit between first and second. As Cmath said, the biggest thing for a first basemen is saving the number of potential errors that the other infielders could have. If we didnt have Morny at first base, can you imagine the number of errors that the Twins infield would have committed by now (especially Punto). Twins have been blest with great fielding first basemen although most did not have the best range…Dougy, Hrbek, Morny, Killebrew.

by 33MorneauMVP on May 14, 2009 2:50 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs