Athletics 5, Twins 1: O.co's Plumbing is Better Than This

Well this sucked. The Twins ended up being swept for the 8th time and they've only played 52 games. According to Aaron Gleeman, this team is on pace to finish 47-115. Seriously.

It's so frustrating to watch this team as it has flashes of brilliance like when it swept the Mariners over the weekend, only to trot into Oakland and play a quality of baseball as rancid as the raw sewage that regularly backs up at the O.co Coliseum.

Today's downfall was a slow bleed from a ton of paper cuts. The A's never put together a big inning, but rather scored single runs in the 2nd through 6th innings. Starter Pat Dean wasn't awful, but he wasn't great either in allowing four runs over just five innings. For what it's worth, he was pulled with just 81 pitches and most likely could have gone a sixth inning, but Paul Molitor decided it was better for the team to let the bullpen carry it to the end.

As for the Twins' lone run, they had the potential all game to score but kept killing its own rallies. They had multiple baserunners in four different innings and got a runner to 2nd base in a fifth, but the only run came on a sac fly after they loaded the bases to start the 6th inning. That was followed by strikeouts from Max Kepler and Juan Centeno, ending their best chance of getting back into the game.

WP: Sean Manaea (2-3)

LP: Pat Dean (1-2)

Studs

As much as I want to say that Robbie Grossman, Brian Dozier and Trevor Plouffe each going 1-for-3 with a walk was pretty decent, I can't reward a team that went 0-for-9 with runners in scoring position. So instead it'll just be Trevor May for striking out the side in his lone inning of work.

Duds

Pat Dean (5 IP, 9 H, 4 R, 2 BB, 3 K), Eduardo Nunez (0-for-5), Max Kepler (0-for-4, 2 K), Byung Ho Park (0-for-3, BB, 2 K)