MINNESOTA 5, BOSTON 0 IN MINNESOTA

Date:  Friday, August 16.

Batting stars:  Doug Mientkiewicz was 2-for-3.  David Ortiz was 1-for-3 with a home run (his fifteenth) and a walk.  Jacque Jones was 1-for-4 with a home run, his nineteenth.

Pitching star:  Joe Mays pitched a complete game shutout, giving up two hits and two walks and striking out six.

Opposition stars:  Carlos Baerga was 1-for-1.  Johnny Damon was 1-for-4 with a double.  Pedro Martinez struck out ten in a complete game, giving up five runs (three earned) on eight hits and a walk.

The game:  There was no score, and no threat of a score, until the fifth.  With one out, Torii Hunter and Mientkiewicz hit consecutive singles and Mohr grounded out to bring Hunter home with the game's first run.  The Twins broke it open in the seventh.  Ortiz hit a one-out home run, followed by an error and consecutive singles by Mientkiewicz, Mohr, and A. J. Pierzynski to make the score 4-0.  Jones led off the bottom of the eighth with a home run to close out the scoring.  The Red Sox did not get a hit until Damon's two-out double in the sixth.

WP:  Mays (2-4).  LP:  Martinez (16-3).  S:  None.

Notes:  This was easily Mays' best game of the season.  He had a game score of 87--his next highest was 67 in a game in September.  It got his ERA below six for the first time all season, at 5.92.

This was one of two complete games for Martinez.  Oddly, both were losses.  The other was a 2-1 loss to Atlanta in June.  Only once all season did he give up more than the five runs he gave up here--in the first game of the season he allowed eight runs (seven earned) in just three innings.

Infielder Carlos Baerga peaked early, but he hung around for a long time afterward.  He signed with San Diego as a free agent in late 1985, but before he got to the majors he was traded in 1989 to Cleveland along with Sandy Alomar in a deal for Joe Carter.  He came up to the Indians in 1990 and became a regular in 1991.  He became a star in 1992, posting the first of four seasons with an average of over .300 and an OPS of over .800.  He was an all-star in three of those seasons, with no apparent reason why he did not make the team in 1994.  He was twenty-six in the 1995 season and appeared destined for many more star years.  Instead, he went backward.  He had a sub-par 1996 and was traded to the Mets at the July deadline.  He stayed with the Mets through 1998, but simply wasn't the same player.  His batting average was decent--.267 as a Met--but he had never drawn many walks and he stopped hitting for power.  After averaging nearly twenty homers a season with Cleveland, he hit in single digits each year for the Mets.  1998 was his last year as a regular, but he hung around as a reserve for several more seasons.  He was with San Diego and Cleveland in 1999, missed the 2000 season, played in Korea and in the Atlantic League in 2001, was with Boston in 2002, with Arizona in 2003-2004, and finished his major league career with Washington in 2005.  He actually was pretty good with Arizona in 2003, batting .343/.396/.464 in 207 at-bats.  For his career, he batted .291/.332/.423 in fourteen seasons.  At last report, Carlos Baerga was an assistant baseball coach with the University of Northwestern Ohio in Lima.

Record:  The Twins were 72-51, in first place, leading Chicago by thirteen and a half games.

BALTIMORE 3, MINNESOTA 1 IN MINNESOTA

Date:  Thursday, August 15.

Batting stars:  Cristian Guzman was 2-for-4.  Luis Rivas was 1-for-3 with a triple and a walk.

Pitching stars:  Kyle Lohse pitched seven innings, giving up two runs on four hits and two walks and striking out four.  J. C. Romero pitched a scoreless inning, giving up one hit and striking out one.

Opposition stars:  Jason Johnson pitched seven innings, giving up one run on six hits and a walk and striking out five.  Chris Richard was 2-for-3 with a double and a walk.  Chris Singleton was 2-for-4 with a home run (his seventh) and a double.

The game:  The second batter of the game, Singleton, homered to give the Orioles a 1-0 lead.  It stayed 1-0 until the fifth, when Hunter led off with a double and scored on a Dustan Mohr single.  The Twins put men on first and second with none out in the sixth but they never advanced.  Melvin Mora led off the eighth with a home run to give Baltimore a 2-1 lead.  Rivas hit a one-out triple in the bottom of the eighth, but again never advanced.  The Orioles led off the ninth with doubles by Jeff Conine and Richard to make it 3-1.  The Twins went down in order in the ninth.

WP:  Johnson (4-9).  LP:  Lohse (10-7).  S:  Jorge Julio (25).

Notes:  Rivas was the leadoff batter, as Jacque Jones was out of the lineup.  Mohr played left with Bobby Kielty in right.

Tom Prince was the catcher, as A. J. Pierzynski was out of the lineup.  He went 1-for-3.

Mike Jackson made his first appearance since July 22, pitching the ninth inning.  He went one inning, giving up one run on two hits.

Jason Johnson is another player who had a longer career than it would seem like he should have.  Not that he was always terrible, but it would be hard to point to many seasons when he was actually good, either.  For the most part, he seemed to pitch just well enough to stay in the rotation.  He was signed by Pittsburgh as a free agent in 1992 and suffered a near-fatal car accident in 1996.  He wasn’t breathing when found by first responders, but was revived and later found to have a fractured skull, clavicle, and mandible.  Despite that, he came back to make his major league debut late in 1997, making three relief appearances.  He was then chosen by Tampa Bay in the expansion draft and was with the big club for the first half of the season, going 2-5, 5.70 in thirteen starts.  He was traded to Baltimore just before the 1999 season, came up to the big leagues in late May, and was in the Orioles rotation the rest of the season, going 8-7. 5.46.  He was with Baltimore for most of 2000, both starting and relieving, and had the worst season of his career:  1-10, 7.02.  He was twenty-six that season, and one would think he was just about out of chances.  He made the Orioles' starting rotation in 2001, however, and for the next three years was a decent starter for them, going 25-36 but with an ERA of 4.25.  That's not exactly an all-star, but it'll keep you in the rotation.  A free agent after the 2003 season, he signed with Detroit and was in their rotation for two years, going 16-28, 4.83.  He pretty much fell off a cliff after that, posting a 6.35 ERA with three teams in 2006.  He went to Japan in 2007 but came back to the United States in 2008, appearing in sixteen games with the Dodgers.  That was his last big league time, but he was in AAA with the Yankees in 2009 and played in the Atlantic League in 2011 and 2013.  For his career, he was 56-100, 4.99.  He appeared in 255 games and made 221 starts.  A diabetic, he was the first major league player to get permission to wear an insulin pump on the field.  At last report, Jason Johnson was living in the Tampa area and was a spokesman and fundraiser for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

Record:  The Twins had lost eight out of ten.  They were 71-51, in first place, leading Chicago by twelve and a half games.