MINNESOTA 2, KANSAS CITY 1 IN MINNESOTA

Date:  Friday, August 2.

Batting stars:  David Ortiz was 2-for-4 with a double.  Jacque Jones was 1-for-3 with a home run (his eighteenth) and a walk.  Dustan Mohr was 1-for-4 with a triple.

Pitching stars:  Rick Reed pitched six innings, giving up one run on four hits and a walk and striking out four.  Eddie Guardado struck out two in a perfect inning.

Opposition stars:  Jeff Suppan pitched seven innings, giving up two runs on eight hits and a walk and striking out six.  Raul Ibanez was 2-for-4 with a home run, his sixteenth.  Luis Alicea was 1-for-3 with a walk.

The game:  Jones led off the bottom of the first with a home run, giving the Twins a 1-0 lead.  Ibanez led off the top of the second with a home run to tie it 1-1.  Mohr led off the bottom of the second with a triple and scored on an A. J. Pierzynski single to give the Twins a 2-1 lead.  And that was it.  The Royals put men on second and third in the fourth inning and again in the seventh inning, but did not get a hit after Joe Randa singled leading off the seventh.

WP:  Reed (9-5).  LP:  Jeff Suppan (8-10).  S:  Guardado (33).

Notes:  Torii Hunter returned to the lineup, going 1-for-4 to make his average .315.

Michael Cuddyer was at first base in place of Doug Mientkiewicz, going 0-for-3.  Mientkiewicz came in for defense in the eighth.

Denny Hocking played shortstop in place of Cristian Guzman, going 0-for-4.

Pierzynski was 1-for-3 and was batting .306.

J. C. Romero retired both batters he faced and lowered his ERA to 1.89

LaTroy Hawkins pitched two-thirds of an inning to drop his ERA to 1.53.

Guardado had his first save opportunity since July 21.

We hope to be back with player profiles in a few days.  What we hope for and what actually happens are not always the same, of course.

Record:  The Twins were 67-43, in first place, leading Chicago by fifteen games.