Kurt Klutch does it again. Suzuki has had a reputation for getting important hits. It's difficult to find stats that will back up that "clutchiness" is a repeatable skill, but Suzuki has had this reputation when he was in college, I remember Oakland commentators talking about it when he was with the A's and now he's carried that through so far with the Twins.

Of course, it could be just a guy that isn't a good enough hitter to expect anything from, so when he does get a hit in an important situation, it's a pleasant surprise. So far, pretty much everything about Suzuki has been a pleasant surprise other than the fact that his daily presence in the lineup is stunting Josmil Pinto's development as a catcher. Oh, well.

The real story of the game was the continued excellence of Phil Hughes. On the season, he has a 5.33 K/BB ratio and in his last 4 starts, all wins, he has an incredible 15/1 K/BB ratio. He hasn't been dominating, but he has a respectable (for Twins standards anyways) 7 K/9 rate. With extremely good control so far, he's done a pretty good Brad Radke impersonation.

Hopefully, the Twins can get healthy and start scoring runs like they did at the beginning of the season. The Twins managed to win three games while Mauer has been out, but two of those victories were 1-0 and 2-1, so that won't last long at all.

Danny Santana continues to smack the ball around, so hopefully Gardy will continue to play him most of the time and let him learn through his mistakes in the field because he has the skills to more than make up for them.

This is exactly why the Twins brought Ricky Nolasco to Minnesota. He's not going to dominate too much, but they need him to be the veteran presence they can count on to keep the bullpen from falling apart.

The Twins spent three days waiting around to play a game, then played three games in 27 hours and were suddenly so desperate for bullpen help, they actually added a 14th pitcher to the staff.

Gardy is certainly a man who knows how to expect the worst. Even with Logan Darnell in the bullpen, he was sweating it out knowing how worn out the other eight relievers were following an exhausting 15 innings of work the previous two days.

However, Nolasco said, "I got this," and pitched all nine innings and held the Orioles to 1.5 runs below their average, although his task was made a mite easier by facing Twins castoff Steve Pearce four times instead of Chris Davis.

Of course, since baseball is a crazy game, the Twins couldn't do anything against Ubaldo Jiminez, who has been terrible this season mostly because of very bad control. The Twins lead the world in walks, so of course Jiminez only issues 1 while striking out 10.

The lone bright spots on offense were hits by Sam Fuld and Eduardo Escobar, who are trying to solidify themselves in the lineup in place of the struggling Aaron Hicks and Pedro Florimon, although it is hard to say if Florimon is struggling since he's never hit in the first place. Fuld will be playing every day for at least the next week while Hicks recovers from a concussion. Meanwhile, top shortstop prospect Danny Santana was just called up after Mike Pelfrey pulled a groin while watching Dodgers' hits flying off their bats. Santana should be in the lineup instead of Escobar to see how he handles it, but Twins assistant GM Rob Antony has indicated that Escobar will continue to play and Santana will be mostly on the bench. That might be better for the Twins for the next few weeks, but it won't help Santana's development and will just be a waste of his service time.

In the past, Gardy has tended to play the prospects even when they are up for a short time. Hopefully, he will stick to that. In the meantime, the Twins have three shortstops and no true backup center fielder. I wouldn't be surprised to see the Twins trade Florimon for a veteran center fielder to back up or even platoon with Fuld if Hicks' concussion symptoms persist or if the Twins decide that Hicks needs to figure things out in AAA.

If only Byron Buxton hadn't gotten hurt.

The big news from this game was that Mike Pelfrey hit the wall hard in the sixth. Of course, it really began before that since all the balls in play in the early innings were on ground balls and that changed to fly balls later, which is a bad sign for a guy relying exclusively on a sinker.

Of course, what should the Twins expect when he never went more than 4 IP in a spring training game. The Twins really coddle pitchers in spring training. They also have a history of struggling in April under Gardenhire. The two may not be unrelated.

Still, the final line for Pelfrey was 5 1/3 innings and 3 ER allowed. A team with a strong bullpen or a strong offense should win a lot of games win they get that from their starter. Unfortunately, the Twins had neither on Friday. The offense disappeared after the first inning and Fien and Thielbar were terrible.

The only real positives were Dozier getting 3 hits after starting the season looking clueless and a home run and a wicked line drive with two RISP for Colabello. It's too early to draw conclusions, but I like what I see from Colabello. He's pretty much guaranteed himself a spot in the lineup against lefties and has already had a couple starts against righties. He'll make sure that Willingham and Kubel have to hit to stay in the lineup.