MINNESOTA 11, DETROIT 4 IN MINNESOTA
Date: Tuesday, September 10.
Batting stars: Dustan Mohr was 3-for-4 with a home run (his twelfth) and a double. Cristian Guzman was 3-for-5 with a triple and three runs. A. J. Pierzynski was 2-for-3 with a triple and a double.
Pitching stars: Johan Santana pitched a scoreless inning, giving up one hit. Tony Fiore pitched two shutout innings, giving up one hit. LaTroy Hawkins pitched a perfect inning.
Opposition stars: Carlos Pena was 2-for-4 with a triple. Robert Fick was 2-for-4. Mike Rivera was 2-for-4.
The game: Torii Hunter hit a two-out three-run homer in the first inning to give the Twins a 3-0 lead. The Tigers came back with two in the second, as Pena hit an RBI triple and scored on a ground out. With two out and none on in the fourth, Doug Mientkiewicz doubled, Mohr singled, and Pierzynski circled the bases on a triple-plus-error to give the Twins a 6-2 lead. Detroit came back again in the fifth, getting a two-run homer by Omar Infante to cut the lead to 6-4. The Twins got back-to-back RBI doubles by Corey Koskie and David Ortiz in the bottom of the fifth to make it 8-4 and scored three in the sixth to put the game out of reach. Mohr led off the inning with a home run, Pierzynski doubled, Guzman tripled, and Ortiz doubled.
WP: Kyle Lohse (12-8). LP: Shane Loux (0-1). S: None.
Notes: Pierzynski raised his average to .305.
The Twins had fifteen hits, eleven of them for extra bases. They had seven doubles, two triples, and two home runs.
Hunter's home run was his twenty-eighth.
Lohse struck out seven in five innings, but allowed four runs on nine hits and no walks.
Hawkins lowered his ERA to 2.28.
This was the first major league appearance for Shane Loux. It did not go well--he lasted four innings and allowed six runs (five earned) on six hits and no walks with three strikeouts. Loux made three starts for the Tigers in 2002, going 0-3, 9.00. He came back to make eleven appearances the next year, going 1-1, 7.12. He then did not make it back to the majors until 2008, when he appeared in seven games for the Angels. That was his only successful season, as he went 0-0, 2.81 in sixteen innings. The next year, he made eighteen appearances (six starts) and went 2-3, 5.86. He then did not make it back to the majors until 2012, when he was with San Francisco. He was in nineteen games, going 1-0, 4.97. Give the guy credit for perseverance. He was only in 58 games, but it was over five seasons and over a period of eleven years. In fact, he kept pitching through 2015, when he was a Sugar Land Skeeter. Last season, he was the pitching coach for the Missoula Osprey in the Arizona organization.
Record: The Twins were 84-61, in first place, leading Chicago by thirteen games.