Royals Sweep Twins With 3-1 Victory

It seems as though the Minnesota Twins are single-handedly attempting to keep the Kansas City Royals in the wild card hunt. With the loss this afternoon the Royals swept the Twins at Target Field, outscoring the home team 17-3. By all accounts it was a pathetic showing, but even the knowledge that it's going to hurt doesn't keep my heart from breaking. Everything is just really hard to watch right now.

To some extent it's understandable. When it's August and you're clearly out of the race, it can be hard to go out there every game while knowing the other team's collection of talent is going to beat you on paper. When the losses add up and the season is lost, yes, it can be difficult to maintain focus and it's not a lot of fun to come to the ballpark every single day. And when it's the third year in a row when your team is finishing as one of the five worst teams in the whole of the game, the monotony and the dread has to grow exponentially.

None of which constitutes a permanent excuse for professional athletes making ridiculous sums of money.

Anyway, today's game wasn't any better than Tuesday's game or Wednesday's game. Ron Gargenhire was ejected for the 66th time in his career. Wilkin Ramirez was taken out of the game with a shin contusion after fouling a ball off of himself. The club played with a two-man bench until Chris Herrmann replaced Ramirez. Samuel Deduno strained his shoulder and left the game after three innings. When it rains, well...right now it's an unstoppable deluge.

Brian Dozier hit his 14th homer of the season. Ryan Pressly, Caleb Thielbar, and Glen Perkins combined for six scoreless innings, with Pressly putting in three strong innings and Thielbar and Perkins putting on strikeout clinics.

I'm going to write about Twins things that aren't related to this game now.

Studs

Duds

The whole of the 2013 season except Joe Mauer and the bullpen