METS 4, MINNESOTA 2 IN NEW YORK
Date: Wednesday, June 19.
Batting stars: Cristian Guzman was 2-for-4 with a double. Brian Buchanan was 1-for-2 with a walk.
Pitching stars: Tony Fiore pitched 1.2 scoreless innings, giving up two hits. J. C. Romero struck out two in a scoreless inning, giving up a hit and a walk.
Opposition stars: Al Leiter struck out eight in 7.1 innings, giving up one run on five hits and striking out four. Mike Piazza was 2-for-3 with a double and two walks. Jeromy Burnitz was 2-for-3.
The game: There was no score until the fifth, when two singles and a walk loaded the bases for the Twins with one out. Pitcher Matt Kinney popped up to short center field, but Luis Rivas was hit by a pitch to bring in a run. Guzman then grounded into a double play. The Twins would regret getting only one, because the Mets came back with two in the bottom of the fifth. Piazza singled home the first run and a ground out brought in the second. It stayed 2-1 until the eighth, when Tony Tarasco hit a two-run homer. Pinch-hitter A. J. Pierzynski singled home a run in the ninth to make it 4-2. The Twins had the tying run on base with two out, but pinch-hitter Matthew LeCroy struck out to end the game.
WP: Leiter (7-6). LP: Kinney (2-6). S: Armando Benitez (16).
Notes: Buchanan was in right field, with Dustan Mohr in left and Jacque Jones getting the day off. Rivas batted leadoff and was 1-for-3 with a hit-by-pitch...Tom Prince started behind the plate in place of Pierzynski. He was 0-for-2 with a walk...Kinney pitched 4.1 innings, giving up two runs on five hits and three walks while striking out three. You can make an argument that the Twins should've pinch-hit for him in the fifth, when he came up with the bases loaded and none out. If Ron Gardenhire had known they were only going to get one run out of it, and that he was going to pull Kinney in the fifth, he likely would have. Obviously, though, you don't know that as play is going on. Kinney had shutout the Mets on just two hits through four innings, so it was not unreasonable to leave him in the game...Torii Hunter was 0-for-3 with a walk and was batting .302...Mohr was 0-for-4 to make his average .310...Romero had his ERA fall to 0.66...Jeromy Burnitz is another pretty fair ballplayer that time seems to have forgotten. He got started late, but this isn't a case of a team holding a player down too long--Burnitz didn't have a good year at AAA until 1995, when he was 26. By this time he had moved on from the Mets, who drafted him in the first round in 1990 and had given him some big league playing time in 1993 and 1994, to Cleveland. During the 1996 season the Indians traded him to Milwaukee, and that's where he really had success. He was a regular outfielder for the Brewers from 1997-2001 and batted .258/.362/.508 with 165 home runs, and average of 33 per season. He was traded to the Mets for 2002 and really didn't do a lot for them, batting just .215/.311/.365 with 19 homers. He had a fine first half for the Mets in 2003, but they traded him to the Dodgers and he struggled in the second half. A free agent, he signed with Colorado for 2004 and had an excellent year, batting .283 and slugging 37 home runs. He went to the Cubs in 2005 and fell to .258 with 24 homers. He signed with Pittsburgh for 2006, but had a down year and retired. He wasn't a Hall of Famer or anything, but he played for parts of 14 seasons and batted .253/.345/.481 with 315 home runs, and that's not too shabby.
Record: The Twins were 40-31, in first place by five games over Chicago.