Luis Castillo Topic Page

The Twins' 1-0 victory on Sunday over Cleveland put them within 4 1/2 games of the Indians for the AL Central lead and within 4 games of Wild Card leading Detroit. It's the closest they've found themselves to the lead since May and Sports Club Stats gives them an 11.4 14.6% chance of making the playoffs.

Joe Christensen says it's about to happen.

Just a few interesting things to point out this afternoon:

It was an interesting game for the Twins. The Felix Hernandez hype was short-lived as he left the game early with soreness in his elbow. Hopefully it's not serious, but the whole event was eerily similar to Fransisco Liriano's departure of last season. The game also featured a crazy ending thanks to a little too aggressive base running from the Mariners.

The Twins are riding their second longest winning streak of the season (7 games) which is separated by only 1 loss from their longest winning streak of 8 games. Milwaukee is a mediocre team, so I expect the Twins to keep things rolling through the weekend. The pitching matchups will be as follows:

Joe Mauer had been slumping (only by his standards) the past couple weeks, but he busted loose for 4 hits in Monday night's series opener against the Dodgers. Joe Mauer's 5 RBI led the Twins to an 8-2 victory setting up a pretty good opportunity for a series sweep with Liriano and Santana taking the mound for the next two games. The 5 RBI were a career high for Mauer and the 4-5 night pushed his batting average up to .377.

The Twins pulled off their second straight sweep and improved their record to 34-34 with a late inning offensive rally against the Pittsburgh Pirates on Sunday afternoon. Johan Santana, as usual, was strong—allowing 1 run through 7 innings. It looked like he might again fall victim to a lack of run support, but the Twins rallied for 4 runs in the top of the 8th inning.

Sunday night's bizarre game included 10 total runs in the first inning, a lot of shaky defense and even a triple play. It was probably the most dissapointing loss for the Twins all year considering that they were handed a 7-3 lead after the first inning.

The Twins set out to prove that they are capable of beating the Detroit Tigers, and they did just that -- barely. The Twins scored 2 runs right away in the first inning off starter, Jeremy Bonderman. Luis Castillo started off the rally by beating out the throw on a chopper up the middle. Joe Mauer then reached on a walk and Torii Hunter came through with a double down the 3rd baseline. The hit scored Mauer and Castillo and Hunter made it to 3rd on a Craig Monroe Error. It was quite dissapointing that the Twins couldn't score with Hunter on 3rd and no outs. Michael Cuddyer lined out to 3rd, Justin Morneau walked and Batista grounded out to end the inning.

The Twins dropped the final game of the 3 game set with the Angles and also last the series 2 game to 1. Jesse Crain took the loss for the Twins giving up 2 runs in the 8th inning. Crain pitched scoreless 6th and 7th innings, and then retired the first 2 batters in the 8th. He gave up 3 straight hits after that including a double to Jose Molina. Crain shouldn't have gone 3 innings today, but Lohse's poor outing yesterday caused the bullpen to get used up.