Heroes.

It looks like the Twins had two heroes, one likely and one quite unlikely.  The likely one was Phil Hughes, who struck out eight and scattered eight hits on his way to 7.1 scoreless innings.  We said yesterday that if the Twins are going to avoid another disastrous second half, Hughes needs to get back to pitching like an ace.  He did that last night, and the Twins are going to need him to keep doing it.

The unlikely hero was Sam Fuld who got three hits.  One of them, even more improbably, was a home run, his second of the year and first as a Twin, which put the Twins in front.  Another was a single that played a key role in getting the Twins and insurance run in the eighth.  The three hits got his average up to .253.  Since bottoming out at .204 on June 21, he has gone 18-for-48, a .375 percentage.

When the Twins were close to .500, which really was only a few weeks ago, it was partly because they were getting offense from some unexpected sources.  Colabello got some key hits for a while, Escobar was doing really well, Morales had a hot couple of weeks, etc.  When that stopped happening, the offense stopped.  At least until Mauer comes back, they're going to need to get offense from unexpected sources again to win games.  Maybe last night will be the start of that.

After a pair of 2-0 games, one each way, the Twins send Second Ace Kyle Gibson to the mound.  Gibson has mostly pitched really well or really badly.  He has eight game scores of 61 or higher and four of 21 or lower.  If we get the good Gibson tonight, we'll continue our season-ending seventy-three-game winning streak.  We're still on track for 113-49!