For the second straight night the Twins put together an eighth inning rally to beat the Cleveland Indians. Just as important, the Kansas City Royals were once again able to defeat the White Sox which allowed the Twins to move to within 1 game of the White Sox. Detroit also lost, to Boston, which moved the Twins to within 7.5 games of the AL Central lead. Boston is just 1 game behind the Twins.

Carlos Silva gave up four singles and a walk in the fourth inning and allowed the Indians' only two runs of the game. Other than that, Silva was stellar through five—allowing just 1 hit outside of the fourth. As it has so many times, the bullpen game on and held the Indians scoreless through the final four innings of the game. Jesse Crain pitched 1 2/3 innings followed by an inning from Reyes and a strikeout by Neshek. The five run eighth allowed Nathan to take the night off and Matt Guerrier pitched the ninth.

The Twins scored one run right away in the first inning on a Joe Mauer single that scored Luis Castillo. They added a second run in the fourth inning on a Luis Rodriguez single which scored Justin Morneau who had led off the inning with a double. The Twins entered the bottom of the eight in a 2-2 tie.

Jason Kubel led off with a single and Jason Tyner came on to pinch-run. Luis Rodriguez was asked to bunt, but never got a pitch in the srike zone and walked. Jason Bartlett then layed down a perfect bunt and the reached base safely to load them up. The "failure" of the sacrifice bunts turned out to be big for the Twins. Luis Castillo singled to put the Twins in the lead and then Lew Ford make the first out on a fielder's choice out at home plate. Mauer added an insurance run and made the second out on a sac fly. Had either of those bunts succeeded there would've been three outs (not to mention one less baserunner). Michael Cuddyer came to the plate and drove a ball over the fence in center to pad the lead at 7-2 and give Nathan a break.

Game Notes

• The Twins' 8 and 9 hitters, Rodriguez and Bartlett were a combined 7-7 with a walk.
• Cuddyer was 3-5 with 3 RBI and his 18th HR of the year. Cuddyer could be the second Twins to surpass 100 RBI as he currently has 77.
• Pat Neshek pitched to only one batter, but picked up the win to improve to 2-0. He has a 0.90 ERA in 20 2/3 IP and has a 10 K/BB ratio.

Coming up

Matt Garza will get a second stab at big-league hitters in Thursday's 12:10 game. A sweep of the Indians would mean the Twins would head into the big weekend series against the White Sox either tied or one game behind them for the wildcar lead. Poor Matt Garza made his debut against a good hitting Toronto club and now he'll face Cleveland which is no slouch when it comes to hitting either.