SEATTLE — The message was written in blue ink on the grease board in the visitors' clubhouse Sunday morning.
"11:00 -- Hitters meeting."
Twins hitting coach Joe Vavra called the meeting in an attempt to rally a group that was batting .113 over the first five games of a six-game road trip. He has watched hitters try too hard to get hits, only to dig themselves a deeper hole. Hitters usually meet before the first game of a series, not the last.
"Simplify," Vavra said. "That's what we're trying to do, get them to talk about each other's plans and then pull for each other and what they're trying to do. Understand collectively how we're going to attack them, so it's like a team offense rather than just a bunch of individual offenses. You put together a few hits that way, but you don't put together many runs if you don't have that."
Not enough players got the message Sunday. The Twins lost 5-2 to the Mariners to complete a 1-5 road trip, one in which they were no-hit Wednesday and one-hit Saturday.
After a clunker of a trip, the Twins headed back to the Twin Cities for a nine-game homestand. They will arrive home with more problems than they had when they left.
Prior to the road trip, there had been confidence that their offense would be functional. But it was virtually nonexistent this past week; they were outscored 31-8 over the six games.
Ryan Doumit was the only player who appeared to get the message Sunday. He went 3-for-3 with two solo home runs. Doumit's homer in the seventh inning was the first long ball by the Twins in 259 plate appearances going back to April 27, seven games earlier, when Trevor Plouffe homered against the Royals at Target Field.
