Genies, Series Recap, and Other Notes

Sometimes a baseball team loses games, and sometimes it refuses to win. And this series showed us perfect examples of both.

Tuesday's game was a genuine clunker by the Twins. It happens. No biggie.

Monday's and Wednesday's games, however, were totally winnable. And the Twins...didn't.

As much as leaving men on base drives me nuts, that's not the Twins' biggest problem. Obviously, the starting pitching is in a shambles.

We all knew that the problems weren't going to be all fixed this season, but, man, this it getting hard to watch.

But rather than whine and puzzle about the whole thing, I think I'll try to come up with some positive baseball things to remember about the series.

How about those awesome defensive plays, on Monday? Denard in the outfield, and then Carroll to Plouffe to Morneau in the infield. Hot.

Wednesday featured a really fun rally and almost made up for a bad start. And the bullpen was amazing.

So let's hope the starting pitching gets it together. If they can do that, the rest of it will fall together

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Obviously, like the rest of us, Gardy is very frustrated with the starting pitching. Clearly he's tired of answering questions and criticisms about it. Probably because he's out of ideas.

I love Gardy's witty retorts in interviews, and his latest one is probably my favorite, even though he probably didn't mean it to be.

He said with exasperation, "we can't go out and buy people. We've got to make this work. I can't rub a bottle to make somebody pop out."

So what if he could invoke a pitcher-genie from a bottle? Who would it be? Would it be a genie who could actually pitch, or would it be a genie who could magically fix the guys Gardy has? Are there only three wishes, or is this the Barbara Eden-type genie who just blinks magic whenever?

So many questions. If you happen to run across a magic bottle next time you're antiquing or garage-saleing, pick it up and send it to the Twins.

Or maybe he just needs a bottle of good Scotch.

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Injury watch
Chris Parmelee was hit in the head with a pitch on Wednesday. It was a very scary moment because he dropped to the ground right away and stayed down for quite a while. On Thursday, the Twins reported that he's doing better and he's listed as day-to-day. I certainly hope he'll be ok soon.

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Roster moves
Josh Willingham was placed on paternity leave to be with his wife, Ginger, for the birth of their third son. And from the picture that Ginger posted on her twitter account (@gjwillingham), it looks like everyone is happy and healthy.

Ben Revere was called up to take Willingham's roster spot. And it sounds like he'll be given every opportunity to stick -- Terry Ryan and Gardy told him they didn't know how long he would be staying and it could be the rest of the season.