BOSTON 2, MINNESOTA 0 IN BOSTON

Date:  Saturday, August 10.

Batting stars:  Cristian Guzman was 1-for-4 with a double.  Doug Mientkiewicz was 1-for-3.  A. J. Pierzynski was 1-for-3.

Pitching stars:  Joe Mays pitched seven innings, giving up two runs on seven hits and one walk and striking out four.  Tony Fiore pitched a scoreless inning, giving up two hits and striking out one.

Opposition stars:  Pedro Martinez struck out eight in eight shutout innings, giving up four hits and no walks.  Nomar Garciaparra was 2-for-4.  Ugueth Urbina struck out the side in his only inning.

The game:  The Red Sox got both of their runs in the second.  Cliff Floyd led off the inning with a double and scored on Shea Hillenbrand's double.  The next two batters went out, but Rey Sanchez singled to make it 2-0.  The Twins' biggest threats came in the first, when Guzman hit a one-out double, and the fifth, when Mientkiewicz hit a one-out single and went to second on Pierzynski's two-out single.  The last ten Twins were retired.

WP:  Martinez (16-2).  LP:  Mays (1-4).  S:  Urbina (27).

Notes:  Denny Hocking played second base, replacing Luis Rivas.  He went 0-for-3,

Torii Hunter was 0-for-4 to drop his average to .307.

Bobby Kielty was 0-for-3 to drop his average to .301.

Pierzynski was now batting .312.

What a mismatch this must have looked like in the newspaper.  "Minnesota (Mays, 1-3, 8.07) v. Boston (Martinez, 15-2, 2.25).  But give Joe Mays credit, he kept the Twins in the game and pitched quite well.  He actually wasn't terrible the rest of the season (he was in a couple of games, but not for the most part).  It was a bad season overall, though, and as we know, future seasons would only get worse.

The Twins managed only four hits off Pedro Martinez.  Nothing to be ashamed of--nobody was hitting him back then.  He went 20-4, 2.26, 2.24 FIP, 0.92 WHIP, 239 strikeouts in 199.1 innings.  He finished second to Barry Zito in Cy Young voting, and while Zito had a fine year Martinez beat him in ERA (by half a run), ERA+, WHIP, strikeouts (despite pitching thirty fewer innings), and just about every other category except wins (23 for Zito).  It was the fifth time he had finished in the top two, and while he would never do it again he would finish third in 2003 and fourth in 2004.  He got MVP votes six times, finishing second (to Ivan Rodriguez) in 1999.  He also led the league in ERA five times and made eight all-star teams.  A tremendous pitcher.

Record:  The Twins were 70-48, in first place, leading Chicago by fourteen games.