Posted by Bill Baer on Saturday, October 10, 2009 at 4:14 am

The story is rather cookie-cutter: two playoff teams battle in a close game that goes into extra innings. Umpire misses call. Slighted team goes on to lose. It’s all the umpire’s fault.

If only it were that simple. Yes, left field umpire Phil Cuzzi missed a call, but did the call cause the Twins to lose? Let’s imagine Mauer does get his justified double. Do the next two hitters — Jason Kubel and Michael Cuddyer — necessarily follow up with singles? Not so, if you buy into the butterfly effect. Kubel and Cuddyer singled following a Mauer single; there is no reason to assume that they would have singled following a Mauer double. They could have just as easily struck out back-to-back, or Kubel could have been hit in the ribs by a fastball and Cuddyer could have had a laser pointed in his eyes by a fan, causing him to ground into a double play.

Aside from chaos theory, the Twins should be kicking themselves for missing many golden opportunities to A) put runs on the board and B) prevent Yankee runners from scoring. Examine the following:

• Exhibit A: Carlos Gomez gets thrown out at third base with two outs in the fourth inning in a 0-0 game.
• Exhibit B: Joe Nathan, the Twins’ closer, started the ninth inning with his team ahead by two runs, 3-1. He promptly allowed Mark Teixeira to reach base via a base hit, then fell behind Alex Rodriguez 3-0 before serving up a game-tying two-run home run. After that? Three up, three down.
• Exhibit C: After Mauer “singled” and Kubel and Cuddyer also singled consecutively to load the bases, the Twins were looking at the bases loaded full of good guys with no outs. According to the Run Expectancy Matrix on Baseball Prospectus, an average team — which, relatively speaking, aptly defines the Twins — will score 2.28 runs.

  Delmon Young, with the bases and no outs, lined out to first baseman Mark Teixeira.

  Run expectancy with the bases loaded, one out: 1.56

  Carlos Gomez grounded into a fielder’s choice.

  Run expectancy with the bases loaded, two outs: 0.75

  Brendan Harris flied out.

Let’s not forget that the Yankees’ starter pitched a good game just as the Twins’ starter did. A.J. Burnett allowed only one run on three hits in six innings of work; Nick Blackburn did the same in five and two-thirds innings. Both teams’ bullpens allowed two late-inning runs and Twins’ lefty Jose Mijares made it three when Teixeira hit the walk-off.

Overall, it was a rather evenly-matched game of good starting pitching, mediocre relief pitching, and stumbling offenses. Unfortunately, the game will be under a cloud of controversy due to a poor ruling by Phil Cuzzi, when in reality, the call ranks somewhere around 10th on the list of factors that led to the Twins’ loss.

Cuzzi definitely blew the call — there’s no excusing that, but blaming him squarely for the loss is a cop-out.