BALTIMORE 6, MINNESOTA 4 IN BALTIMORE
Date: Wednesday, August 7.
Batting stars: Cristian Guzman was 2-for-5 with a stolen base, his ninth. Corey Koskie was 1-for-3 with a walk. A. J. Pierzynski was 1-for-3 with a walk.
Pitching stars: Tony Fiore pitched two shutout innings, giving up a walk and striking out one. J. C. Romero pitched a scoreless inning, giving up two hits.
Opposition stars: Gary Matthews was 3-for-4 with a double. Luis Lopez was 2-for-3 with a double and a walk. Melvin Mora was 2-for-4 with a triple and a double.
The game: Matthews singled home a run in the first. In the second, the Orioles scored four times to take a 5-0 lead. Jeff Conine and Chris Richard led off the inning with singles. Geronimo Gil struck out, but Jerry Hairston singled to load the bases, followed by a two-run double by Mora, an RBI double by Lopez, and another run-scoring single by Matthews. The Twins got back into the game with four in the third. Pierzynski led off with a double and went to third on Jacque Jones' one-out single. An error brought home one run, Koskie singled home another, and two more scored on another error, cutting Baltimore's lead to 5-4. It stayed 5-4 until the fifth, when the Orioles loaded the bases with none out. A double play and a ground out got the Twins out of the inning, but the double play scored a run to make it 6-4. The Twins put men on first and second in the sixth and eighth, but did not score again.
WP: Scott Erickson (5-10). LP: Rick Reed (9-6). S: Jorge Julio (22).
Notes: Torii Hunter was 1-for-4 to make his average .311.
Bobby Kielty was 0-for-3 with a walk and was batting .305.
Pierzynski's average went to .309.
Reed settled down after the second, but still pitched only five innings. He gave up six runs (five earned) on ten hits and no walks, striking out four.
Erickson was struggling through a poor year. This was one of his better games, as he pitched seven innings and gave up four runs (one earned) on seven hits and a walk, striking out one. His ERA went down to 4.80. He would struggle through five more games, then be shut down at the end of August. He would not pitch again until 2004.
This was Jorge Julio's rookie year, although he had appeared in eighteen games in 2001. It was by far his best year, as he went 5-6, 1.99, 1.21 WHIP with twenty-five saves and finished third in Rookie of the Year voting behind Eric Hinske and Rodrigo Lopez. He would be the Orioles closer for two more seasons but was not nearly as good. In fact, he would not post an ERA under four again until 2008, when he was no longer a closer. He went 0-7, 4.38 with 36 saves in 2003 and 2-5, 4.57 with 22 saves in 2004. The Orioles finally took him out of the closer role in 2005 and traded him to the Mets for 2006. The Mets sent him on to Arizona in late May. He was traded to Florida after the season and traded again to Colorado in May of 2007. The team that had him seemed always willing to get rid of him, but on the other hand there seems to always have been somebody who wanted him, thinking they could get him back to where he had been in 2002. He signed with Cleveland for 2008, was released in late May, and signed with Atlanta, for whom he actually pitched well, but in only 12.1 innings. He moved on to Milwaukee for 2009, then his major league career was over. He played a couple more years for Bridgeport in the Atlantic League. His major league numbers are 17-34, 4.43, 99 saves, 1.44 WHIP. He basically turned one good year into a nine-year career, which is pretty good if you can do it. At last report, Jorge Julio was a high school baseball coach in the Fort Lauderdale area.
Record: The Twins were 69-46, in first place, leading Chicago by fifteen games.