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Last night's game was not a great showing for the Minnesota Twins' offense, but it was mostly because Jon Lester was in total shutdown mode. The new-ish A's pitcher had some of his best stuff going last night, and the Minnesota batters couldn't get anything going. The Oakland bullpen didn't even see any action last night, as Lester held on through the ninth inning for a complete game shutout, tossing 122 pitches. The Twins didn't even have a hit against him until Kurt Suzuki broke up a no-hitter in the sixth inning.
As for Minnesota's pitching, Yohan Pino did well enough, but just couldn't match Lester tonight. Pino ended up giving up three earned runs on six hits in 5 2/3 innings. He did walk a batter and strike out another two Oakland batters as well. The bullpen kept the A's off the board after Pino was taken out, with Caleb Thielbar, Ryan Pressly, and Brian Duensing combining for 2 1/3 scoreless and hitless innings.
The only scoring came from a third inning two-run bomb from Stephen Vogt and an RBI double in the fourth from Derek Norris. As previously noted, Lester had been carrying a perfect game into the sixth inning, until a Kurt Suzuki single in the sixth against his former team. Brian Dozier just missed a homer in the sixth as well, and even though the Twins loaded the bases that same inning, nothing would come of it.
Overall, last night's game against Oakland was definitely not one of the Twins' best, but it's hard to win when you're facing a pitcher like Lester that's completely on his game. They'll just have to give it another shot tonight, when Kyle Gibson takes on Scott Kazmir at O.co Coliseum.
Roll Call
| # | Commenter | # Comments
 |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | wayback | 50 |
| 2 | WestRiverTwinsFan | 36 |
| 3 | Brananorama | 33 |
| 4 | twinsgirl197 | 29 |
| 5 | MNWildcat | 22 |
| 6 | myjah | 21 |
| 7 | kenzertz | 17 |
| 8 | TwiMs | 13 |
| 9 | Win-MIN-Twins | 9 |
| 10 | less cowbell, more 'neau | 7 |
Win Expectancy (FanGraphs)
<iframe src="http://www.fangraphs.com/graphframe.aspx?config=0&static=0&type=wins&num=0&h=450&w=450&date=2014-08-07&team=Athletics&dh=0" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" height="450" width = "450" style="border:1px solid black;"></iframe><br /><span style="font-size:9pt;">Source: <a href="http://www.fangraphs.com/wins.aspx?date=2014-08-07&team=Athletics&dh=0&season=2014">FanGraphs</a></span>
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