TORONTO – Aaron Hicks flipped his bat to the ground. Trevor Plouffe slammed his helmet. Justin Morneau just shook his head.
Signs of frustration were up and down the Twins batting order Friday night while they made outs against lefthander Mark Buehrle. Again.
And Ron Gardenhire is sick of it. After the Twins lost 4-0 to the Toronto Blue Jays — their sixth loss in a row — the manager told his team to lighten up a little.
"I told the boys it is baseball," Gardenhire said. "We're making it like a job right now. It's got to be baseball. That's the message to the team tonight.
"These guys are working their tails off. They go out there and do everything they can, and the games have just not been clicking for us. We have to get back to relaxing and have some guys smile. There's too much tension."
Asked how does a team relax, Gardenhire fired back that he would kick players in the rear if they weren't smiling, adding: "These are grown men in uniforms, running around a baseball field, and now we have all the pressure in the world on us, like the sky is falling. The sky is not falling. There's people out there in a little more trouble that we are into."
Plouffe went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts. He threw his helmet to the ground after striking out on a Buehrle fastball clocked at 85 miles per hour to end the top of the sixth inning.
"It's true. There's nothing wrong with what we are doing," Plouffe said. "We're going out there and playing hard. We're preparing the right way. We're giving a great effort. When something doesn't go our way, say we don't knock a guy in from second base, it's OK. You can't let that deflate what we are trying to do."
