Friday night's game was one that almost surely would not have been won with Ramon Ortiz starting. The Twins offense was able to score just 1 run off Oakland lefty Joe Kennedy in 8 innings. Kevin Slowey held down the Oakland offense through six inning and left the game with a 1-1 tie. His only flaw was a sixth inning homerun to Eric Chavez.

Slowey gave up 5 hits and 2 walks while thowing two-thirds of his 99 pitches for strikes. The game eventually went into extra innings where the Twins posted 2 runs in the top half of the 10th started by a Luis Castillo double down the left field line. Jeff Cirillo put the Twins in the lead with a single just over the outstretched glove of Bobby Crosby. Michael Cuddyer followed that up with a walk before Justin Morneau grounded out, but advanced the runners to second and third with one out. Torii Hunter was walked intentionally and then Mike Redmond drove in what would become a big insurance run on a single to left.

Joe Nathan came on for the save in the bottom of the inning and struggled. He walked the lead off batter Travis Buck and Milton Bradley later singled to set up runners on the corners with 1 out. A Dan Johnson sacrifice fly brought the game to within 1. Nathan finally ended the game and picked up the save on a Crosby strikeout.

Game Notes

• It was Nathan's 12th save of the year.
• Pat Neshek picked up his 3rd win of the season while pitching 1 1/3 innings of perfect baseball.
• Mike Redmond was 2 for 5 with the big 10th inning insurance RBI. He's batting .323 on the year now, which has been huge in Joe Mauer's absence. There's now a chance that Mauer could see a rehab assignment before he returns to the Twins active roster.

The Twins have now won 5 straight games, which improves upon what was already their best win-streak of the 2007 campaign. Cleveland came back late with 5 ninth inning runs of Todd Jones. That kept the Twins 6 games behind Cleveland, but they're now within 1.5 games of second place Detroit.

The second game of the series will take place at 8:05 pm CT and will feature Carlso Silva (3-5, 4.22) againt Joe Blanton (4-3, 4.28).