Padding the lead Twins 8 at Devil Rays 0 September 5th, 2006 at 11:59 pm
The Twins, with some help from Boston, extended their lead over the Chicago White Sox in the AL wild car race. Detroit’s loss also moved them to within 4 games of the Central leading Tigers. The Twins open up a 4-game series against the Tigers on Thursday.
Santana was dominant in his start on Tuesday night. He picked up his 17th win of the season and pretty much solidified the Cy Young award for the season. Roy Halladay is really the only pitcher that compares to Santana and he falls short of Santana in every of the important categories. Santana pitched eight shutout innings—allowing just 2 hits and a walk while striking out 12. Simply put, the Devil Rays didn’t have a chance.
The Twins offense showed some signs of life with eight runs. The Twins didn’t hit any homeruns (Cuddyer was robbed of one by the umpire in the seventh), but did get three doubles and a triple on their way to 8 runs.
Game Notes
- It took Santana only 95 pitches to get through eight innings. Matt Guerrier pitched the ninth
- Joe Mauer was 1-4 with a 2 RBI double and walked once.
- Nick Punto was 1-5 and struck out in the third with one out and a runner on third. The runner was stranded at third that inning.
- Cuddyer, Morneau and Bartlett each had 2 hits and 1 RBI.
- Morneau has 115 RBI and Cuddyer is inching closer to 100—currently at 92.
- Tampa Bay made three errors in the game including two costly errors in the third that led to the Twins three runs that inning
Silva on Wednesday
- Silva will try to keep the Twins in the win column on Wednesday. The Tampa Bay offense has been friendly to Twins pitching so far, so hopefully they’ll keep that trend going.
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2 Comments
Kris wrote: September 7th, 2006 at 12:09 pm
It's hard to say what will happen for sure. None of the three teams are playing real well right now. If any of them had been playing over the past few weeks like they were in July, then one of the teams would have a spot virtually locked up by now.
The Twins pitching has stabilized over the last turn in the rotation, but their bats are falling flat. Punto is starting to show that he's probably just a utility type player. Joe Mauer isn't hitting at .400 anymore and Jason Tyner is coming back to reality.
The Twins need a hot streak from a couple players if they want to pull away from the White Sox. Liriano might help too.
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Korn wrote: September 6th, 2006 at 9:25 pm
Yo guys, love what you're doing here. Tough loss today. The problem with the Twins right now is that they don't have the ability to pull away. The rotation is inexperienced and strained and the hitting has been inconsistent recently. Look out for another few weeks of +/- .5 game in the wild card.