MINNESOTA 5, CHICAGO 0 IN CHICAGO

Date:  Tuesday, August 20.

Batting stars:  Jacque Jones was 2-for-3 with a home run (his twenty-second), a walk, and a stolen base (his sixth).  David Ortiz was 2-for-4.  Torii Hunter was 1-for-3 with a walk and stolen base, his twenty-first.

Pitching star:  Kyle Lohse pitched a complete game shutout, giving up four hits and two walks and striking out eight.  He threw 124 pitches.

Opposition stars:  Mark Johnson was 1-for-1 with two walks.  Matt Ginter pitched 1.2 scoreless innings, giving up one hit.  Antonio Osuna pitched a perfect inning.

The game:  Jones led off the game with a home run to give the Twins a 1-0 lead.  Lohse gave up a pair of singles in the first inning and gave up just two more hits the rest of the game.  The Twins took a 4-0 lead in the third.  An error and a walk put men on first and second with none out and Cristian Guzman singled home a run.  A double steal put men on second and third and Hunter delivered a two-run single.  The Twins added one more run in the sixth on a Dustan Mohr single.  The White Sox had men on first and third with two out in the first but only had a man in scoring position one other time.  That was in the fifth, when a bunt single and an error again put men on first and third with two out.  The bunt single was the last hit Chicago would get.

WP:  Lohse (11-7).  LP:  Jim Parque (1-3).  S:  None.

Notes:  Matthew LeCroy made his first appearance since July 31, playing as the DH.  He went 0-for-4.

Ortiz played first base, with Doug Mientkiewicz out of the lineup.

Denny Hocking was at third base, with Corey Koskie out of the lineup.  He went 0-for-4.

Tom Prince was the catcher, with A. J. Pierzynski out of the lineup.  He went 0-for-3.

The 85 game score was easily Lohse's best of the season.  His next highest was 68, when he struck out nine in six shutout innings in Seattle on July 6.

Parque started for the White Sox and pitched 5.1 innings, giving up five runs (four earned) on five hits and two walks and striking out four.  It was his third start of the season, and he would get only one more.

Memory told me that Jim Parque was a fairly decent pitcher.  Memory was wrong, as he had only one season with an ERA under five.  The White Sox took him in the first round in 1997.  It wasn't entirely his fault.  He had an excellent season in high A in 1997 and also made two AAA starts.  He wasn't that good in them, but he was twenty-two and in his first year of pro ball.  In 1998 he made eight starts at AAA Calgary, going 2-3, 3.94, 1.54 WHIP, and then was rushed to the majors and placed in the White Sox' rotation.  As one might expect, he wasn't very good, going 7-5 but with a 5.10 ERA and a 1.63 WHIP.  In the rotation for all of 1999, his numbers were similar.  2000, however, seemed to represent a significant improvement, as he went 13-6, 4.28, although still with a high WHIP of 1.49.  That was as good as it would get for him, though.  An injury forced him to miss most of 2001, as he made only five starts.  In 2002 he had a poor year in AAA, but Chicago brought him up anyway and put him in the starting rotation for the month of August.  He was a free agent after the season and signed with Tampa Bay.  He started 2003 in the Devil Rays' rotation, but after five starts he was sent to AAA, where improved to mediocre.  That was his last stint in the majors, but he pitched in AAA for the Diamondbacks in 2004 and for Seattle in 2007.  For his career, he was 31-34, 5.42, 1.64 WHIP in 544.1 innings.  He appeared in 103 games, 97 of them starts.  It's possible that he would've done better if he'd been allowed to learn pitching in the minors.  It's also possible that he was just getting things figured out when injuries threw him off track.  It's also possible, of course, that he just really was never all that good to begin with.  He is the founder of Big League Edge, which proclaims that it is "baseball's premier player developer", of Kent, Washington.

Record:  The Twins were 75-52, in first place, leading Chicago by sixteen and a half games.

MINNESOTA 7, CHICAGO 3 IN CHICAGO

Date:  Monday, August 19.

Batting stars:  Jacque Jones was 3-for-4 with two home runs (his twentieth and twenty-first) and a double, scoring three times and driving in three.  Doug Mientkiewicz was 3-for-4 with a home run, his tenth.  Cristian Guzman was 2-for-4 with a home run, his seventh.

Pitching stars:  Tony Fiore pitched three shutout innings, giving up two hits and a walk and striking out two.  Bob Wells pitched a scoreless inning, giving up a hit and striking out one.

Opposition stars:  Aaron Rowand was 3-for-5 with a double.  Mike Porzio pitched 4.2 innings of relief, giving up one run on two hits and striking out four.  Carlos Lee was 1-for-5 with a two-run homer, his twentieth.

The game:  The long ball was really prominent in this game.  Jones and Guzman led off the game with back-to-back homers and David Ortiz hit a one-out homer to give the Twins a 3-0 lead.  Jones hit a two-run homer in the second to make it 5-0.  In the bottom of the third, with two out and a man on second, Lee and Magglio Ordonez hit back-to-back homers to cut the Twins lead to 5-3.  The Twins opened the fifth with a Jones double and a Guzman single, putting men on first and third.  Then came the only non-homer run of the game, as Jones scored on a double play to make the score 6-3.  Mientkiewicz homered in the sixth to round out the scoring at 7-3.  The White Sox had men on first and second with two out in the sixth but did not otherwise threaten after that.

WP:  Brad Radke (5-3).  LP:  Gary Glover (5-6).  S:  None.

Notes:  Ortiz' home run was his sixteenth of the season.

Torii Hunter was 0-for-4, dropping his average to .303.

A. J. Pierzynski was 0-for-4 to make his average .298.  It was the first time he had been below .300 since July 24.

Radke pitched five innings, giving up three runs on seven hits and one walk with three strikeouts.

Fiore's ERA fell to 2.95.  It was the first time it had been under 3.00 since June 28.

For the White Sox, Glover pitched four innings, giving up six runs on eight hits and no walks with no strikeouts.

Ordonez' home run was his twenty-eighth.

Left-hander Mike Porzio appeared in three major league seasons.  He was signed by the Cubs as a free agent in 1993.  He was released three times, by the Cubs, Boston, and Baltimore, and spent four years in independent leagues before he made his major league debut.  He spent 1998 in Class A with Atlanta and Colorado, was jumped all the way to AAA at the start of 1999 and was promoted to the majors in July of that year.  His readiness is somewhat questionable--in 35 AAA games of relief, he was 5-1, 3.38, but with a WHIP of 1.73, mostly due to the fact that he walked 30 batters in 42.2 innings.  He appeared in 16 games for the Rockies, pitched 14.2 innings, and posted an ERA of 8.59 with a WHIP of 2.11.  It would be three years before he got to the majors again.  He spent 2000 mostly in AA with Colorado and was in AAA with the White Sox in 2001.  He made the major league club out of spring training in 2002 and did well in his first six appearances, but did poorly in his next four and was sent back to AAA.  He came back to the majors at the start of August and had a tremendous month, posting an ERA of 1.10 and a WHIP of 0.55 in 10 appearances (16.1 innings).  That was pretty much his career highlight, as he went back to being Mike Porzio in September, posting an ERA of 6.75.  He was mostly back in AAA in 2003, making three starts for the White Sox in July.  That was it for his major league career, but he continued to pitch for several more years.  He was apparently injured most of 2004, making just three minor league appearances in the Cleveland organization.  He was in AA with Atlanta in 2005 and then pitched for Bridgeport in the Atlantic League until 2010.  His major league record was 3-3, 5.90, 1.58 WHIP.  He pitched 71,2 innings in 51 games.  He did have one really good month, though, and it's one more really good month than a lot of people have.  Mike Porzio is now a scout for the Milwaukee Brewers.  He also owns The Clubhouse Baseball and Softball Training Academy in the greater New York area.

Record:  The Twins were 74-52, in first place, leading Chicago by fifteen and a half games.