It's official: Twins playoff bound Royals 1 at Twins 8 September 25th, 2006 at 11:40 pm
The Twins headed into Monday night’s game against the Royals with a magic number of 2. The Cleveland Indians pounded the Chicago White Sox to reduce the magic number to 1. The Twins-Royals game remained pretty close until the seventh inning when Torii Hunter provided some separation with a 2-run homerun. The Twins went on to clinch the wild card race and also move themselves within 1 game of Detroit for the Central title.
The playoff berth wasn’t the only good thing to happen to the Twins on Monday. Boof Bonser gave the Twins yet another excellent start giving hope of a formidable playoff rotation after Johan Santana. Torii Hunter also reached a career high 30 homers and became the second Twin to reach 30 homers after 18 years of no 30 homerun hitters.
Justin Morneau capped off the night with a 3-run homerun. It was, in a corny way, fitting that the homerun was his 34th, matching the uniform number of Kirby Puckett who the Twins set out to honor this season.
Game Notes
- Torii Hunter got his 94th and 95th RBI and still has an outside shot of being the Twins 3rd player to 100 RBI. The Twins have never had 3 players with 100 RBI.
- Justin Morneau has 129 RBI. Only one Twin has driven in more runs in a season than Morneau. Harmon Killebrew drove in 140 in 1969. Morneau is making a strong case for AL MVP.
- Joe Mauer beat out an infield grounder in his final at-bat to go 2-3 and push his league-leading batting average to .349. He has a 6-point lead over the Yankee’s Robinson Cano.
More work to do
Johan will kick off the Twins push for the AL Central on Tuesday. He’ll also try to rebound from a couple un-Johan-like starts. Detroit will open up a 3-game series against Toronto who has been playing pretty well lately. Detroit will end the season with 3 games against Kansas City, so the Twins are counting on Toronto to give them a chance to overtake the Tigers. The Twins are also just 1 game behind the Yankees who share the best AL record with the Tigers.
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