BOSTON 5, MINNESOTA 2 IN MINNESOTA
Date: Saturday, August 17.
Batting stars: A. J. Pierzynski was 2-for-4 with a double. David Ortiz was 1-for-3 with a double and a walk. Dustan Mohr was 1-for-3 with a double and a walk.
Pitching stars: Johan Santana struck out six in five innings, giving up three runs (two earned) on five hits and three walks. Juan Rincon pitched two shutout innings, giving up one hit and striking out one.
Opposition stars: Rickey Henderson was 3-for-4 with a home run (his fifth), a double, and a walk. Tim Wakefield pitched six innings, giving up one run on four hits and three walks and striking out four. Alan Embree retired all six men he faced, striking out five.
The game: Henderson led off the game with a walk and later scored on a wild pitch, giving the Red Sox a 1-0 lead. Three singles and a ground out made it 2-0 in the second. Another run scored on an error in the fifth to make it 3-0. The Twins got on the board in the seventh, but missed a chance for a big inning. Ortiz led off with a double and went to third on a Torii Hunter single. Hunter stole second and Doug Mientkiewicz walked, loading the bases with none out. Mohr walked to cut the lead to 3-1 and the bases were still loaded with none out. But Alan Embree came in to strike out Pierzynski, Luis Rivas, and Bobby Kielty to strand all three runners. Boston scored one in the eighth on a sacrifice fly and Henderson homered in the ninth to make the score 5-1. The Twins got one more in the ninth when Mohr doubled with two out and scored on a Pierzynski single, but Rivas struck out to end the game.
WP: Wakefield (7-4). LP: Santana (6-5). S: None.
Notes: Hunter was 1-for-4 and was batting .304.
Pierzynski raised his average to .304.
This was Rincon's first appearance with the Twins since July 18.
Henderson was near the end of his Hall of Fame career. He played in just 72 games for the Red Sox in 2002, getting 179 at-bats. He batted just .226, but still drew a ton of walks--his OBP was .369. He was forty-three in 2002. The next year, 2003, would be his last. With the Dodgers he batted just .208, but still had an OBP of .321.
This was the only appearance Alan Embree made against the Twins in 2002. Yet, he only struck out more than five batters against three teams. He struck out six of thirteen Mariners, six of nineteen Blue Jays, and eleven of twenty-four Yankees. For the season, he struck out 81 batters in 62 innings, a rate of 11.8 per nine innings. His next highest strikeout rate was 9.8 in 2001, when he struck out 59 in 54 innings.
There will be no player profile today. Nobody really piqued my interest, and there's nothing I could tell you about somebody like Rickey Henderson that you don't already know anyway.
Record: The Twins were 72-52, in first place, leading Chicago by thirteen and a half games.