Winning ugly.

In baseball, as in most of life, really, you take your victories any way you can get them.  This wasn't exactly an artistic success, and I'm really not sure the Twins deserved to win it--they did little for six innings and were helped a lot by an error--but as far as I can tell on the internet they're going to let it count in the standings, so we'll take it.

Sam Deduno had a good outing.  When you throw a magical zoomball, every once in a while it will lose its magic and zoom to a place you didn't want it to go.  It struck me that, when you have a starting pitcher who doesn't really know where the ball is going, you might do better to have your best defensive catcher work with him.  Still, using Pinto behind the plate did not seem to hurt anything.

Having Pinto at the plate helped quite a bit.  He had two hits, scored twice, and drove in a run.  He has brought his average back up to .240, so he appears to be out of his slump.  Joe Mauer came back into the lineup and had a hit and a walk.  Chris Parmelee hasn't exactly smashed the ball all over the lot since coming back, but he got a hit and is batting .333.  Danny Santana got another key hit, drove in a run, and at least for this game appeared as if he might be a viable option in the outfield, at least in small doses.

The bullpen also came through well.  Burton had a good inning, making five appearances in a row (4.1 innings) in which he has not allowed a run.  In fact, he gave up only two hits and no walks in those appearances.  We hope Casey Fien will be all right, but his injury allowed Glen Perkins to come in with two out and the tying run on third in the eighth.  We can say he truly did earn his four-out save.

The Twins ended the game with an outfield of Nunez, Santana, and Parmelee.  That's not the trio you want guarding a lead in the last two innings of the game.  Unless Gardy is given the final say over who's on the roster, however, that was not his fault.  He had Hicks in the starting lineup, but pinch-hit for him in the seventh.  It's a move that made sense.  The Twins were down 3-0, they had two on with two out, and Hicks is hitting .160.  The Twins had done little on offense, and if they didn't score it wasn't going to matter who was playing in the outfield.  Gardy (or Terry Steinbach) decided they needed to do whatever they could to score when they had the chance.

So, a 3-4 road trip.  As davidwatts said, not a disaster.  An off day today, then we come home to take on the Bostons.  As we all know, today was the start of a 127-game winning streak.  We're still on track for 143-19!