BALTIMORE 4, MINNESOTA 1 IN BALTIMORE
Date: Thursday, August 8.
Batting stars: Jacque Jones was 3-for-5. A. J. Pierzynski was 2-for-4. Cristian Guzman was 1-for-3 with a double and a walk.
Pitching star: Bob Wells pitched a scoreless inning, giving up a hit and a walk and striking out one.
Opposition stars: Travis Driskill pitched 6.2 innings, giving up one run on seven hits and two walks and striking out three. Chris Richard was 1-for-3 with a two-run homer, his third. Jeff Conine was 1-for-3.
The game: Richard hit a two-run homer in the second to give the Orioles a 2-0 lead. The Twins had a promising start to the third, as Luis Rivas doubled and went to third on Jones' bunt single, but a Guzman sacrifice fly was all they could do, cutting the lead to 2-1. In the fourth, Conine delivered a two-run single to build the Baltimore lead to 4-1. The Twins threatened late, loading the bases in the eighth and putting two on in the ninth, but could not score again.
WP: Driskill (8-5). LP: Brad Radke (4-3). S: Jorge Julio (23).
Notes: David Ortiz was at first base, with Bobby Kielty at DH and Doug Mientkiewicz out of the lineup. Ortiz was 0-for-3 with two walks and Kielty was 1-for-3 with a walk.
Michael Cuddyer was in right field and was 1-for-4.
Torii Hunter was 0-for-5, dropping his average to .307. He was 1-for-16 in his last four games. This follows a seven-game hitting streak in which he was 13-for-29.
Kielty was now batting .306. He had gone 0-for-19 before getting a single in the sixth.
Pierzynski raised his average to .312.
Radke continued to struggle, but made it through seven innings, tied for his second-longest outing of the season to this point. He gave up four runs on five hits and no walks and struck out one.
The Orioles used a former Twin and a future Twin. Marty Cordova was 1-for-3 and Tony Batista 1-for-3 with a hit-by-pitch.
Travis Driskill was drafted three times--by Houston in 1990, the Angels in 1992, and Cleveland in 1993. He reached AAA in 1997 but didn't do very well there and was sold to Yakult in the Japanese league for 1998. He came back to the United States in 1999 and had another mediocre year in AAA for Cleveland. He was then a free agent and signed with Houston, spending two years at AAA for them. He had a very good year in New Orleans in 2001, but he was twenty-nine then, so the Astros weren't terribly impressed. A free agent again, he signed with Baltimore for 2002, was outstanding in four AAA starts, and came up to the majors in late April. He began in the bullpen, but within a month he was in the rotation. He went 8-8, 4.95, 1.49 ERA, and that was really as good as it got for him. In 2003 he once again started in AAA and once again was in the majors within a month. And once again, he didn't pitch very well, although this time he remained a reliever. He went 3-5, 6.00, 1.48 WHIP, and the Orioles had seen enough. Most of the rest of his career was spent in AAA, but he got in five games with Colorado in 2004, one with Houston in 2005, and two with Houston in 2007. He continued to pitch well in AAA, but one assumes it had to do with being a veteran pitching to a lot of younger players. At any rate, as a big leaguer he was 11-14, 5.23, 1.52 WHIP. He appeared in 57 games, 19 of them starts, and pitched 196 innings. All 19 of his starts came in 2002. In this game, he notched his second-highest game score, second only to a game in May against Seattle. He has been a minor league pitching coach and it appears he is currently a broadcaster for the Round Rock Express. His son, Travis Driskill, is a pitcher for Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas.
Record: The Twins had now lost four straight and were 69-47, in first place, still leading Chicago by fourteen games.