ATLANTA 11, MINNESOTA 0 IN MINNESOTA
Date: Tuesday, June 11.
Batting stars: Bobby Kielty was 1-for-2 with a walk. Matthew LeCroy was 1-for-3 with a double. Those were the only two Twins hits.
Pitching stars: LaTroy Hawkins struck out two in two shutout innings, giving up one hit. Matt Kinney pitched a scoreless inning, giving up one walk and striking out one.
Opposition stars: Tom Glavine pitched seven shutout innings, giving up two hits and one walk and striking out two. Rafael Furcal was 3-for-5 with a walk. Vinny Castilla was 2-for-4 with a home run, his ninth.
The game: The Braves scored once in the third on a Chipper Jones sacrifice fly and once in the fourth on a home run by Keith Lockhart. They blew the game open in the fifth, scoring seven times. Andruw Jones hit a two-run homer and Castilla and Matt Franco also homered. Javy Lopez added a two-run homer in the sixth. The biggest Twins threat came in the second, when LeCroy led off with a double and Kielty followed with a walk. A fly out and a double play ended the threat.
WP: Glavine (11-2). LP: Kyle Lohse (6-4). S: None.
Notes: LeCroy played first base in place of Doug Mientkiewicz...Kielty played center field in place of Torii Hunter...Brian Buchanan was the DH in place of David Ortiz...Tom Prince caught in place of A. J. Pierzynski...Jacque Jones was 0-for-4 to make his average .313...LeCroy's average was now .338. He couldn't be expected to keep that up, and he sure didn't. Over the last three months of the season he batted .163...Kielty's average was now .339...Dustan Mohr was 0-for-3 and was batting .315...Luis Rivas was 0-for-3 and was batting .306...Hawkins now had an ERA of 1.37...Tom Glavine was nearly as consistent as Greg Maddux. He had double-digit wins in every season from 1989-2002, had nine in 2003, and then was back in double digits from 2004-2007. He won twenty or more games five times and fourteen or more games thirteen times. His ERA was under four (often well under) every season from 1991-1998, and after posting a 4.12 mark in 1999 he was back under four from 2000-2002. He made twenty-nine or more starts in every year from 1998-2007 except for the strike year of 1994, when he made twenty-five. He pitched 180 or more innings a season over that same span, with the strike year of 1994 again being the lone exception (165.1). He won the Cy Young Award twice and was in the top three four other times. It has to be a wonderful feeling for a manager to know he has two top-notch starters in his rotation who never get hurt and almost always give you six or seven innings.
Record: The Twins were 37-28, in first place by five games over Chicago.