TAMPA BAY 9, MINNESOTA 1 IN TAMPA BAY

Date:  Wednesday, April 24.

Batting stars:  Torii Hunter was 1-for-3 with a home run, his seventh.  Matthew LeCroy was 1-for-4 with a double.

Pitching stars:  Jack Cressend and Mike Jackson each pitched a scoreless inning.

Opposition stars:  Ryan Rupe pitched seven shutout innings, giving up one hit and one walk with five strikeouts.  Russ Johnson was 2-for-3 with a walk.  Jason Tyner was 2-for-4 with a walk.

The game:  There was no score until the third.  The Devil Rays loaded the bases with none out on a double and two walks.  Steve Cox then had an RBI single followed by a sacrifice fly to give Tampa Bay a 2-0 lead.  In the fifth, the Devil Rays put the game out of reach with seven runs.  Three singles opened the inning to produce two runs.  An error and a walk loaded the bases, and three more singles produced five more runs.  The Twins had only one hit through the first seven innings and three for the game.  They scored their lone run when Hunter led off the eighth with a home run.

WP:  Rupe (3-1).  LP:  Eric Milton (3-2).  S:  None.

Notes:  LeCroy was the DH in the continued absence of David Ortiz...Jay Canizaro got the call at second base, going 0-for-3 to drop his average to .138...Milton pitched 4.1 innings, allowing eight runs (six earned) on seven hits and three walks with one strikeout.  His ERA went to 5.90...Jackson dropped his ERA to 1.13...Jacque Jones was 0-for-4 to make his average .329...LeCroy had his average drop to .308...Hunter's average went to .383...Dustan Mohr was 1-for-3 and was batting .362...A. J. Pierzynski was 0-for-3 to make his average .333...Tyner was batting .225...Chris Gomez was 1-for-4 to make his average .288...Brent Abernathy was 1-for-3 with a walk to raise his average to .265...Despite his excellent performance in this game, Rupe was, to put it bluntly, not a good pitcher.  In five seasons in the majors he had only one ERA below five, posting a 4.55 ERA in his rookie year of 1999.  In three of his five years his ERA was above six.  Even so, he made 89 appearances in the majors, 84 of them starts.  Part of the reason for that is that, of course, is that the Devil Rays weren't very good in those years.  Another part of it, though, is that every once in a while he'd put together a performance like this, giving Tampa Bay hope that perhaps he could do it consistently.  In his fifteen starts in 2002, he had two complete games and four game scores of 77 or higher.  Unfortunately, he also had three games in which he couldn't get past the fourth inning and six game scores of 36 or lower.  He appears to have been a pitcher who, in Bill James' phrase, pitched well just often enough to fool you into pitching him some more.  He left the Devil Rays after this season, made four appearances with Boston in 2003, and then his big league career was over.

Record:  The Twins were 13-8, in second place, a game behind Chicago.