METS 3, MINNESOTA 2 IN NEW YORK
Date: Thursday, June 20.
Batting stars: Cristian Guzman was 2-for-4 with a stolen base, his sixth. Corey Koskie was 1-for-4 with a double and two RBIs.
Pitching stars: Eric Milton struck out six in four shutout innings, giving up a hit and a walk. J. C. Romero pitched a perfect inning, striking out one.
Opposition stars: Steve Trachsel pitched 8.1 innings, giving up two runs on five hits and no walks and striking out seven. Edgardo Alfonso was 1-for-3 with a two-run homer and a walk. Mike Piazza was 1-for-4 with a home run, his fourteenth.
The game: There was no score through five, and neither team even got a man to third base in that time. With two out and none on in the sixth, Piazza hit a home run to give the Mets a 1-0 lead. With two out in the eighth, Alfonso hit a two-run homer to make it 3-0. With one out in the ninth, the Twins got consecutive singles from David Ortiz, Jacque Jones, and Guzman to load the bases. Doug Mientkiewicz popped up, but Corey Koskie delivered a two-run double down the right-field line. I have no idea if there was any chance for the speedy Guzman to score from first. If there was, though, the Twins should've taken it, because Torii Hunter struck out to end the game.
WP: Trachsel (5-6). LP: Tony Fiore (5-2). S: Benitez (17).
Notes: There is no apparent reason for Milton to have left the game after four innings. One assumes that he might have had a minor injury. He did not miss a start...Jones was 1-for-4 to make his average .316...Hunter was 1-for-4 and was batting .301...Bobby Kielty was 0-for-3 to make his average .325...A. J. Pierzynski was also 0-for-3, dropping his average to .327...Romero's ERA fell to 0.65...Steve Trachsel had an extremely long career. He was rarely really good, but he was rarely really bad, either. He was consistently average for a long period of time. That's not a criticism--an average pitcher can be a very valuable man. Teams have lost pennants because they couldn't find an average starting pitcher to fill out their rotation. From 1995-2007 he made between 28 and 34 starts every season. Three times he had an ERA under 4.00, twice he had an ERA above 5.00, and most of the rest of the time he was in the mid-fours. His ERA+ was between 80 and 120 every year but one. For his career, he was 143-159, 4.39, ERA+ of 99, FIP of 4.88. He made only one all-star team, in 1996, and never got a Cy Young vote. He simply was a guy who you could put down in the starting rotation every year and know you were going to get thirty starts and that they would be of legitimate major league quality. Every manager in both leagues would love to have a pitcher like that.
Record: The Twins were 40-32, in first place, four games ahead of Chicago.