Postgame: Doumit catches Diamond again

A couple of leftovers from the Twins' fourth straight loss:

-- Ryan Doumit was behind the plate for Scott Diamond's seventh start on Saturday, just as he has been for five of the first six. And while the frequency of that battery wasn't planned ahead of time, manager Ron Gardenhire said he doesn't mind it, either.

"It's not a bad pairing. They work fine together," Gardenhire said. "Scotty has a good plan. He gets together with [Doumit] and they work it out."

Doumit has started 14 games at catcher, six of them with Diamond and three with Mike Pelfrey. He also caught both of Liam Hendriks' starts, and one apiece by Pedro Hernandez, Kevin Correia and Vance Worley.

The past couple of seasons, Carl Pavano expressed a preference for Drew Butera catching his games, and Gardenhire frequently obliged. Butera, in fact, caught 48 of Pavano's 88 starts over four seasons in Minnesota, with Joe Mauer catching only 34.

"Pavano just felt really comfortable with Butera, because he had a really, really low target. He felt that small target made him get the ball to a small area," Gardenhire said. "Carl had his theories, and as a veteran, you kind of go, "OK ... "

-- Red Sox manager John Farrell gave Ryan Dempster every chance to earn his third win, even as the righthander gave up three runs in the fifth inning to turn a 7-2 lead into 7-5. But after his 127th pitch, the most thrown by a Red Sox pitcher since May 2011, Farrell pulled Dempster one out short of qualification for the victory.

-- Daniel Nava also smacked a long home run for Boston, greeting reliever Casey Fien with a two-run blast to right. Nava now has 27 RBIs on the season.

-- Joe Mauer had two hits and one strikeout, to extend both his hitting streak and strikeout streak to 15 consecutive games. He can tie his career-high streak of consecutive games with a hit when the Twins try to avert their second sweep of the season on Sunday.

-- Dustin Pedroia said he intended to throw to the plate just in case, and didn't know -- but wasn't especially surprised -- that Doumit would be trying to score on Aaron Hicks' sixth-inning pop fly.