Nick Punto Topic Page

We've covered a couple familiar offensive faces, now onto one of the new offseason acquisitions, Brendan Harris. Harris was acquired in the trade the sent Matt Garza and Jason Bartlett to the Rays for Delmon Young and Harris.

The Twins 9-2 victory over the White Sox on Tuesday night clinched a fourth straight series win for the Twins as they've quickly become the hottest team in the AL Central. They've won 6 of their last 7 and moved into a third place tie with the White Sox and trail the Cleveland Indians by 5.5 games.

For a 15-7 loss, there's still some positive things that can be taken from the game. For the second straight game, the Twins offense was able to put some runs on the board. Michael Cuddyer gave the Twins an early lead with a 2-run homer in the first. The Twins had 3 other home runs--2 from Justin Morneau and Jason Kubel's first. The problem on Tuesday night was Twins pitching.

The Twins lost their 4th straight game on Saturday and dropped 2 games under .500 and 6.5 games behind division leading Detroit. The Twins also have now lost 4 straight series and have just 2 wins to show in the first 8 games of their 9 game home stand. Justin Morneau suffered a broken nose in the eighth inning when an errant throw by Nick Punto bounced up off the dirt around 1st base and hit him square in the nose.

The Twins were pretty flight all-around on Saturday. Sloppy defensive play is being blamed for the 4-1 loss, and there's definitely some validity to that clame, however, the offense also only scored 1 run. It's tough to win games with 1 run scored.

Sunday's game was a tough one to watch. I can't remember a time in recent history when Johan appeared to be laboring so much for an entire outing. He gave up 9 hits and 4 walks in 5 1/3 innings, but amazingly still only gave up 3 runs. The month of July has not been a good one for Johan, by his standards anyway. He has a 3-1 record, but it's his 4.74 ERA that's unusual. I'm not worried though.

The Twins got off to a slow start on Monday night in Chicago. Despite having baserunners in scoring position in the 3rd and 4th innings, Javier Vasquez managed to hold the Twins scoreless through five innings. In the meantime Brad Radke had given up a homerun in each of the 4th and 5th innings. However, they were both solo homers, so the damage was minimal. The Twins matched the White Sox in power on Monday night; the difference was the Twins had more baserunners on when the balls left the park.

With Johan Santana on the mound the Twins led the entire game, but the victory came at a cost. Shannon Stewart and Torii Hunter left the game with foot injuries leaving an already thin outfield in even worse shape. Nick Punto finished the game in center field. Stewart has already been placed on the DL.

Mauer topped his hit total of Monday night's game with 5 singles on Tuesday night against the Dodgers. I wish I could say I was surprised, but Mauer had proven over the past three month's that he's among baseball's best pure hitters. He may be on a June tear, but he was no slouch in the other months of the season.

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.