Roy Halladay Topic Page

The Twins beat the Boston Red Sox for their 6th win in the last 7 games. The win brought the Twins back to .500 with a 24-24 record, and pulled them ahead of Kansas City in the standings. They still trail the Detroit Tigers by 3.5 games.

Kevin Slowey earned his 7th win of the season. Only Zack Greinke and Roy Halladay have more than 7 wins. Slowey probably hasn't been the best pitcher on the team, but he's been good enough and gotten plenty of run support when he needed it.

Before the season starts I have to get my predictions set in stone, so people can point and laugh at me at the end of the season. Please share your picks in the comments.

American League

East: Tampa Bay Rays

Central: Cleveland Indians

West: Los Angeles Angels

Wild Card: New York Yankees

Cy Young: Roy Halladay

MVP: Grady Sizemore

ROY: David Price

Last night in his post-game press conference Ron Gardenhire was clear about the need for starters to pitch deeper into games. Kevin Slowey had just turned in a five inning start and Matt Guerrier gave up the lead late in the game.

Kevin Slowey allowed 2 homeruns and 5 total runs through 5 innings on Monday night as the Blue Jays edged the Twins by a score of 8-5. The Twins had been 4-0 in Slowey starts before the game.

The Twins will return home on Friday night after a 9 game road trip that started out rough, but finished on a more positive note with two straight victories over Texas. The Twins will hope to keep the momentum going against a Toronto team that's recovered a bit after losing their first 9 games of May.

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.

I posted some live commentary and a game recap over in the scoreboard section, so check that out for details of the game. From time-to-time over the course of the season I'll keep a running live commentary on games, so be sure to stop by during games and leave comments as well.

The Twins couldn't muster the offense needed against Roy Halladay and B.J. Ryan in the season opener. Santana clearly wasn't in midseason form as he seemed to hit a wall in the 6th inning. The Twins hit two homeruns (Batista and Stewart) but couldn't get enough baserunners to put runs on the board.

The last two seasons Johan Santana has been arguably the most dominant pitcher in baseball. He has more strikeouts than any pitcher over the past two seasons and has finished each season with an ERA below 3.00. However, over these same two seasons we've come to know two different Johan Santanas. We have "Johan the Great" and "Johan the Absolutely Amazing". Johan has built a reputation of starting off the season a little slow, and then coming on strong after the All-Star break. Let's take a look at the numbers:

In Baseball, you'd rather be playing well in the month of September than in April, so you have some momentum going into the playoffs. However, when it comes to making the playoffs, April games count just as much as those in September. The first few weeks of the Twins' season could prove to be pretty important when it comes to how the season is going to turn out. Let's take a look at the tough matchups they'll be facing right away.