Twins struggling with Royals Royals 4 at Twins 3 August 30th, 2006 at 11:24 pm
The Twins have lost two straight games to a team they should beat. There’s still a month left in the season, but if the race comes down to the final days of the season, they might be able to look back at two games that slipped away, despite pretty good pitching performances from Matt Garza and Boof Bonser. For a while it looked like Wednesday was going to shape up to be a good day for the Twins. Detroit was losing its second game in New York, the White Sox were losing, and the Twins were leading the Royals 2-0. That all changed abruptly.
The Yankees didn’t have Mariano Rivera available in the ninth inning of the second game, since he had pitched in the first game of the doubleheader. Craig Monroe hit a 3-run homer in the ninth to put the Tigers in the lead and win the game. The White Sox also came back with 3 runs in the eighth inning against Tampa Bay.
Boof Bonser cruised through five innings for the Twins before the Royals scored three runs and knocked him out of the game in the sixth. The Royals added an insurance run in the ninth, which proved to be big after Michael Cuddyer hit his second homer of the game to make the score 4-3. The Twins couldn’t add anymore runs and lost by that score.
The Twins dropped to 1 1/2 games back in the wildcard race with the loss and Chicago’s victory.
Game Notes
- Cuddyer’s two homeruns provided all three of the Twins’ RBI. He has 20 homers and 90 RBI on the season.
- Luis Castillo had 2 infield singles before leaving the game with a sprained ankle while playing a ball hit up the middle. He’ll likely be day-to-day.
- Bonser struck out eight batters in 5 1/3 innings
Radke to miss start
The Twins announced Wednesday that they will skip Radke’s scheduled start on Saturday in New York. Fortunately, rosters will expand on Friday which should give them options (probably Scott Baker) for a replacement. Francisco Liriano also threw from a mound in tennis shoes on Wednesday and said he felt great. If everything stays on track he could be back in mid-September.
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