MINNESOTA 4, KANSAS CITY 3 IN MINNESOTA (10 INNINGS)

Date:  Saturday, August 3.

Batting stars:  Cristian Guzman was 3-for-4 with a stolen base, his eighth.  A. J. Pierzynski was 2-for-4.  Luis Rivas was 1-for-3 with a home run, his second.

Pitching stars:  Brad Radke struck out eight in six innings, giving up three runs on four hits and two walks.  J. C. Romero pitched two perfect innings, striking out one.  Tony Fiore pitched a scoreless inning despite giving up two hits and a walk.

Opposition stars:  Paul Byrd pitched eight innings, giving up three runs (two earned) on eight hits and no walks and striking out four.  Brent Mayne was 2-for-4 with a three-run homer, his second.  Michael Tucker was 2-for-5 with a double.

The game:  The Twins scored two in the first.  Jacque Jones led off with a single and scored on a single-plus-error by Cristian Guzman.  Guzman got all the way to third and scored on a Corey Koskie sacrifice fly.  It stayed 2-0 until the fifth, when Joe Randa was hit by a pitch, Neifi Perez singled, and Mayne hit a three-run homer to give the Royals a 3-2 advantage.  Guzman came through again in the eighth to tie it.  Pierzynski led off with a single, was bunted to second, took third on a fly to right, and scored on Guzman's single, making the score 3-3.  With one out in the tenth, Rivas hit a walkoff home run to win the game for the Twins.  Rivas and Guzman were probably the two weakest bats in the Twins lineup, but not on this day.  One of the many things that makes baseball the greatest sport is that things like this happen.

WP:  Johan Santana (6-2).  LP:  Darrell May (2-8).  S:  None.

Notes:  Torii Hunter was 1-for-3 to keep his average at .315.

Bobby Kielty was 0-for-4 and was batting .316.

Pierzynski raised his average to .308.

Radke made his first start since May 30.  He threw eighty-three pitches.

After seeing him throw eight shutout innings on July 28, the Twins decided to skip Santana's next start and send him to the bullpen.  He would pitch in relief in the next game, too, then come back to start three days later.

Chuck Knoblauch, struggling through his last season, was the Royals' DH in this game.  He went 0-for-4 to drop his average to .194.

Darrell May, the loser in this game, is another guy who got chance after chance in the majors without accomplishing much.  In his seven seasons, he had one good year, 2003, when he went 10-8, 3.77, 1.19 WHIP.  Every other year he had an ERA of over five and a WHIP of over 1.4, sometimes well over.  For his career, he was 26-43, 5.16, 1.45 WHIP in 660.2 innings.  He appeared in 161 games, 97 of them starts.  Six teams gave him a chance:  Atlanta, Pittsburgh, the Angels, Kansas City, San Diego, and the Yankees.

Record:  The Twins were 68-43, in first place, sixteen games ahead of Chicago.

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.