MINNESOTA 3, CLEVELAND 2 IN CLEVELAND

Batting stars:  Doug Mientkiewicz was 2-for-4.  Cristian Guzman was 2-for-5 with a double.  Jacque Jones was 2-for-5 with a double.

Pitching stars:  Rick Reed pitched seven innings, giving up two runs on four hits and two walks and striking out three.  Eddie Guardado struck out two in a perfect inning.  J. C. Romero pitched two-thirds of an inning while facing just one batter, getting him to hit into a double play.

Opposition stars:  Ellis Burks was 2-for-4.  Ben Broussard was 1-for-2 with a home run, his fourth.  Jason Davis pitched 5.2 innings, giving up one run on six hits and two walks and striking out three.

The game:  The Indians had men on first and third with one out in the first but did not score.  The Twins had a man on third with one out in the fifth but did not score.  In the bottom of the fifth, Broussard led off with a home run to break the scoreless tie and Burks singled home a run later in the inning to make it 2-0.  The Twins got on the board in the sixth when David Ortiz doubled and Mientkiwicz singled him in.  Luis Rivas led off the seventh with a walk and Jones doubled to put men on second and third with none out.  Guzman then singled them both home to give the Twins a 3-2 lead.  Cleveland did not get a man past first base after the fifth inning.

WP:  Reed (15-7).  LP:  Carl Sadler (1-2).  S:  Guardado (41).

Notes:  Torii Hunter missed his second consecutive game and was presumably dealing with a minor injury.  He would play about half a game on September 17, but would not really return to the lineup until September 20.  Bobby Kielty was in center field and was 1-for-4.

Reed made his seventh consecutive strong start.  He was 6-1 over that period with an ERA of 1.57.  He lowered his season ERA from 4.63 to 3.74.

Dave Maurer pitched a scoreless inning for Cleveland.  This was the first of two major league appearances he would make in 2002.  The other would be September 25, also against the Twins, when he would give up two runs in a third of an inning.  He had been a September call-up for San Diego in 2000 and done pretty well, going 1-0, 3.68 in 14.2 innings.  That was as good as it ever got for him, though.  He made three appearances for San Diego in 2001, the two referenced above for Cleveland in 2002, and three more for Toronto in 2004.  For his career, he was 1-1, 8.87 in 22.1 innings.  His playing career ended after the 2004 season.

Carl Sadler, the losing pitcher in this game, had a similarly short career.  This was his rookie season.  He came up in late July and did okay, going 1-2, 4.43, 1.28 WHIP.  He started the 2003 season in the majors and stayed for a month and a half.  He posted an ERA of 1.86, which sounds great, but he had a WHIP of 1.66.  He was used as a LOOGY, making 18 appearances but pitching just 9.2 innings, leading one to believe he was often allowing other people's runs to score and then being bailed out by better relievers.  He never made it back to the majors and was done playing after 2005.  His career stats were 1-2, 3.60, 1.40 WHIP in 30 innings (42 games).

Also appearing in this game was another reliever with a short big-league career, Dave Elder.  This was also his rookie season.  He made 15 appearances and pitched 23 innings.  He did all right, going 0-2, 3.13, 1.39 WHIP.  He apparently was hurt much of 2003--he made four (bad) appearances for the Indians and eight at AAA, but that was it.  He never made it back to the majors and was done playing after 2006.  His line is 1-3, 4.62, 1.62 WHIP in 25.1 innings (19 games).

Record:  The Twins were 86-63, in first place, leading Chicago by twelve games.

CLEVELAND 12, MINNESOTA 5 IN CLEVELAND

Date:  Friday, September 13.

Batting stars:  Matthew LeCroy was 2-for-3 with two two-run homers, his sixth and seventh.  Jacque Jones was 2-for-5 with a home run, his twenty-sixth.  Cristian Guzman was 2-for-5 with a double.

Pitching stars:  Johan Santana struck out three in 2.1 scoreless innings, giving up two hits and no walks.  Tony Fiore pitched a perfect inning and struck out one.  Mike Jackson pitched a scoreless inning, giving up one hit and striking out one.

Opposition stars:  Jim Thome was 3-for-4 with a home run (his forty-fifth) and four RBIs.  Travis Fryman was 3-for-5 with a home run (his tenth) and two doubles.  Terry Mulholland pitched seven innings, giving up two runs on six hits and two walks and striking out five.

The game:  The Indians jumped on Eric Milton in the first inning, scoring five runs. Ellis Burks had an RBI single, Thome hit a three-run homer, and Fryman hit a solo home run.  Cleveland didn't let up in the second, scoring four more as Thome had an RBI single and Karim Garcia hit a three-run homer.  It stayed 9-0 until the sixth, when Garcia had a run-scoring ground out, Fryman hit an RBI double, and Josh Bard drove in a run with a single, making the score 12-0.  The Twins finally got on the board in the seventh, as LeCroy hit a two-run homer.  They got their final three runs in the ninth, as LeCroy hit another two-run homer and Jones hit a solo home run to make it look like a slightly better game than it was.

WP:  Mulholland (3-1).  LP:  Milton (13-9).  S:  None.

Notes:  Bobby Kielty was in center field, with Torii Hunter not in the lineup.  Kielty went 1-for-4.

A. J. Pierzynski started the game at catcher, with LeCroy replacing him in the fifth inning.  Pierzynski was back in the lineup the next day, so presumably he was just given the rest of the day off in a blowout.

This was, as one might guess, the worst game Milton had this season.  He pitched 1.2 innings, allowing nine runs on eight hits and a walk and striking out one, giving him a game score of three.  It was the fifth time he'd had a game score below twenty.  One might say that when he was bad, he was really bad.

Fiore got his ERA below three at 2.96.

Mulholland had started the season with the Dodgers.  He was traded in late July with two other players for Paul Shuey.

This game featured the major league debut of reliever Alex Herrera.  He pitched in five games, worked 5.1 innings, and had an ERA of zero.  I don't know whether, had his career ended then, that would've been a record.  As it turned out, however, he was with the Indians for about three weeks in July of 2003.  He was unscored upon in his first seven appearances, giving him a career ERA of zero through eleven innings, but then gave up seven runs in his next three games, covering just 1.1 innings.  Those next three games were his last three games, as he went back to AAA and never made it back to the majors.  He kept pitching for a long time, though, as he was active in the Venezuelan Winter League through the 2014-2015 season.  For his big league career, his ERA was 5.11 in 12.1 innings (fifteen games).  But I suspect Cleveland fans were pretty excited about him for a little while.

Record:  The Twins were 85-63, in first place, leading Chicago by twelve games.