“I might wake up tomorrow feeling differently,” he said. “We’ll see. I’ll make a decision soon and go from there.”

If this was Radke’s final appearance, it was a disappointing one, ending with him sitting in the dugout staring at the field.

His teammates once again could not come up with a timely hit, his injured right shoulder couldn’t come up with one more big start and he couldn’t even catch a simple popup.

Pitching to extend the Twins’ season and his career at least another day, Radke allowed four runs — three earned — and five hits in four innings.

Radke got little help. Shortstop Jason Bartlett committed his second error of the series on a grounder by Kotsay in the third inning. Bradley then homered to make it 4-0.

Radke’s dropped popup proved more symbolic than significant.

With two outs in the fourth, D’Angelo Jimenez hit a popup halfway up the first-base line. Radke called off catcher Joe Mauer and first baseman Justin Morneau but the ball deflected off his glove for an embarrassing error.

An error by Morneau in the seventh led to four more unearned runs.

“That wasn’t Twins baseball at all,” Hunter said. “We know it. Everybody who saw it knows it. We didn’t play Twins baseball. We made three errors. That’s not us. We didn’t get guys over. We didn’t do anything.”

After making a hard push down the stretch to make the postseason and win the AL Central, the Twins had little left against Oakland.

Minnesota never held a lead in this series and finished 1-for-19 with runners in scoring position. The Twins have lost four straight postseason series and won just two of 15 games since beating the Angels on Game 1 of the 2002 ALCS.

“It’s disheartening to see how good we played over the last four months and then to lose the first three games,” Radke said. “There’s really no words for it.”

Minnesota squandered two early chances. With runners on first and second and one out in the first, Michael Cuddyer hit into a double play.

Then after a leadoff double by Morneau and sacrifice bunt by Hunter in the second, White hit a fly to left field that wasn’t deep enough to score Morneau. After Jason Tyner walked, Bartlett struck out to end the threat.

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