CLEVELAND 5, MINNESOTA 3 IN MINNESOTA (10 INNINGS)
Date: Sunday, July 6.
Batting stars: A. J. Pierzynski was 2-for-4 with a double and a walk. Doug Mientkiewicz was 2-for-5 with two doubles.
Pitching star: Brad Radke pitched seven innings, giving up two runs on five hits and a walk and striking out four.
Opposition stars: Matt Lawton was 3-for-5 with a home run (his fourteenth) and three runs. Shane Spencer was 2-for-4 with a home run (his fifth) and three RBIs. Milton Bradley was 2-for-5 with a triple. Jason Stanford pitched five innings, giving up two runs on five hits and four walks and striking out one.
The game: Bradley hit a two-out triple in the first but was thrown out trying to stretch it into a home run. That enabled the Twins to take the early lead in the second on a walk to Torii Hunter and a single-plus-error by Dustan Mohr. It went to 2-0 in the third on back-to-back two-out doubles by Bobby Kielty and Mientkiewicz.
The Indians got on the board in the fourth when singles by Lawton and Bradley were followed by a sacrifice fly. The Twins loaded the bases in the fourth and put men on first and second in the fifth but did not score. They did get one more in the sixth when Pierzynski doubled and scored on a Luis Rivas single.
Cleveland got that run back in the seventh when Casey Blake doubled and scored on a Victor Martinez single. Lawton homered in the eighth to tie it 3-3. It stayed tied until the tenth, when Lawton singled and Spencer hit a two-run homer. The Twins went down in order in the bottom of the tenth, and did not get a hit after the seventh.
WP: David Riske (2-1). LP: Eddie Guardado (1-4). S: Danys Baez (20).
Notes: Mohr remained in left in the absence of Jacque Jones, with Kielty in right. Justin Morneau pinch-hit for Matthew LeCroy in the seventh and remained in the game at DH.
Corey Koskie was 0-for-5 and dropped to an even .300.
By game scores, this was Radke's best game since April 24.
LaTroy Hawkins gave up a run in two innings to raise his ERA to 1.84.
Cleveland used three players with Twins connections: Lawton, Casey Blake, and Jack Cressend.
The Twins had lost two in a row and six of seven.
Record: The Twins were 44-43, in second place in the American League Central, 3.5 games behind Kansas City. They were one game ahead of third-place Chicago.