MILWAUKEE 10, MINNESOTA 2 IN MINNESOTA
Date: Saturday, June 29.
Batting stars: Corey Koskie was 1-for-4 with a home run, his eighth. Luis Rivas was 1-for-2 with a double and a walk.
Pitching stars: None.
Opposition stars: Matt Stairs was 3-for-4 with two home runs (his third and fourth) and a double, driving in three. Richie Sexson was 3-for-4 with a double and a hit-by-pitch, scoring three times. Alex Sanchez was 4-for-6.
The game: Milwaukee did not have a big inning, but scored two runs four times and one in two other innings. The Twins actually led in the first, getting a home run from Koskie to take a 1-0 lead. The Brewers tied it in the second on Stairs' first homer. It was still 1-1 after three, but Paul Bako hit a two-run homer to make it 3-1 in the fourth. Stairs hit his second homer, a two-run shot, in the fifth to increase the lead to 5-1. The Twins got a run back in the sixth to cut it to 5-2, but any thoughts they had of getting back into the game were quickly squelched when Milwaukee scored two in the seventh and Ryan Thompson hit a two-run homer in the eighth. Sanchez singled in the game's final run in the ninth.
WP: Jose Cabrera (4-5). LP: Matt Kinney (2-7). S: None.
Notes: Torii Hunter was 0-for-4 and was batting .302...Dustan Mohr was 0-for-4, dropping him to an even .300...A. J. Pierzynski was 0-for-3 and fell to .323...This would be Kinney's last appearance for the Twins in 2002. He made it through six innings, giving up five runs on eleven hits and two walks and striking out three. He apparently was pitching injured, as he would make rehab starts in the GCL, Fort Myers, and AA New Britain, but would not come back to the Twins, being traded to Milwaukee after the season...Tony Fiore came in and allowed four runs on four hits and a walk in two innings. He was in the middle of a stretch in which he would give up ten runs in six innings (five games). His ERA went from 2.12 to 3.59 in that stretch. I would imagine some people thought he'd turned back into a pumpkin, but he got it going again and pitched well in the second half of the season...Milwaukee's starter, Cabrera, pitched six innings, giving up two runs on three hits and no walks and striking out one...Alex Sanchez was a pretty good major league player for four years. A native of Cuba, he came to the United States on a raft in 1994 at age eighteen. He was drafted by Tampa Bay in 1996 and reached the majors in 2001. 2002 was his first full season. A mostly-regular outfielder, he batted .289/.343/.358. As you can see from that, he had very little power and never developed any, but he hit for a high average. He had a similar year in 2003 when he was traded to Detroit in May. He then kicked it up a notch in 2004, batting .322/.335/.386. Surprisingly, however, Detroit released him in mid-March of 2005. He signed with Tampa Bay a few days later, but a couple of weeks after that we found out why Detroit released him--on April 3, 2005, he was suspended for ten games for steroid use. He came back and was batting .346 when Tampa Bay waived him on June 23. Nominally it was because of concerns about his defense, but one has to assume that steroid use carried a much higher stigma at the time. Whatever the reason, he was never the same player after that. He was claimed by San Francisco but batted just .256 in 19 games and then missed the rest of the season due to injury. He never played in the majors again. He was in the minors for Cincinnati for 2006, for the White Sox in 2007, played in the Atlantic League in 2008, and was in the Mexican League in 2009-2010. His lifetime numbers are .296/.330/.372 in 1527 at-bats.
Record: The Twins were 45-36, in first place by five games over Chicago.