Get me rewrite!

So I turned on the game in the sixth inning, and the Twins were behind 2-1.  They were still behind 2-1 after six, and after seven, and after eight, and I was planning to write about how it was too bad the Twins had wasted good starting pitching for the second straight game.

Then Josh Willingham stepped up to the plate and said, "Oh, no, you don't!"  The homer perhaps rattled David Robertson a little, or perhaps he just had one of those days where he could not consistently get the ball to go where he wanted it to go.  He struck out Kubel, walked Suzuki, struck out Escobar, walked Hicks, and then Brian Dozier launched a double that put the Twins ahead.  Robertson left following an intentional walk to Joe Mauer, and the Greatest Fans in the World booed him for committing the unpardonable sin of blowing his second save in two months.  Nunez then drove in two with a double, Arcia brought home to more with a single, and not only was there no save for the Yankees, there was no longer even a save opportunity for the Twins.  The Yankees went down meekly in the bottom of the ninth, and the good guys left New York triumphantly, winning two out of three.

The comeback should not let us forget the excellent pitching of Phil Hughes.  It had to be especially satisfying for him to pitch well against the Yankees, since the Greatest Fans in the World treated him like garbage despite the fact that he won 18 games and was an all-star in 2010 and won 16 to help carry the team to the playoffs in 2012.  He apparently wasn't a True Yankee or something.  We are quite happy to have him as a True Twin, because after a slow start he has pitched very well in seven consecutive starts.  He probably won't keep up this pace--it would by far be his best season as a starter if he did--but it's looking like this, at least, was one Twins management got right.

I like Jason Kubel, he has a South Dakota connection, I'd love to see him succeed, but I have to wonder how much farther the Twins are going to go with him.  He's done very little since the first week-and-a-half of the season and hit a Hicksian .179 in the month of May with zero extra-base hits.  He struck out 27 times in 67 at-bats.  I hope he can turn it around, but there's really nothing to base that hope on at this point.  He's lucky that nobody at Rochester is really banging on the door at this point, but eventually even the Twins are going to decide to give someone else a shot if Kubel doesn't make some kind of a contribution pretty soon.

But that's negative, and who wants to be negative after a glorious win like this?  Not me!  The Twins now carry their momentum to Milwaukee, where they start an odd, split four-game series, two in Milwaukee and two in Minnesota.  The Twins will send Kyle Gibson, who has been up and down but overall has pitched okay, against Matt Garza, about whom something similar could be said.

The Twins have now played one-third of their season.  It's hard for me to believe a third of the season is already gone, but it is.  They sit two games below .500, in third place, and only two-and-a-half games out of the playoffs.  More importantly, though, they now have Momentum, and as we all know from listening to TV commentators, Momentum, is All-Important in baseball.  That big ninth-inning was just what the Twins needed to propel them to a season-ending 109-game winning streak.  We're still on track for 134-28!