Having lost 6 of 7, the Twins needed a big game from the team's biggest free-agent signing in franchise history and they got it. Ricky Nolasco wasn't exactly dominant, but he was good enough. In fact, Nolasco looked like he was fighting himself all game, so to get 6 effective innings out of him was a positive sign.

An even better sign was the Twins erupting for 6 runs. Playing in the Yankees' bandbox may helped some, especially on Josh Willingham's homer, but it was nice to get three home runs in a game for the first time this season. The Twins' offense has been pretty bad since the start of May, but the return to health of Willingham and Oswaldo Arcia should help, especially if Arcia can lay off some bad pitches long enough to give himself a chance to hit something hard.

After Friday's game, Willingham now leads the Twins in OPS at .917 and Oswaldo is third at .864. Danny Santana is just behind Willingham at .907. With Escobar hitting too well at SS to allow Santana much playing time there, the Twins will have to decide which on-the-job training they can endure more: Santana in CF or Hicks batting RH only.

The main storyline coming out of this game is that Kyle Gibson struggled on the road again. However, the defense was terrible behind him. If they just make the plays they should, Gibson probably only gives up three runs and would have probably been left in to pitch after five innings. If anything, this was a better game than most for Gibson since he struck out 4 and walked none in five innings, which is much better than his season numbers, which is almost the same number of walks as strikeouts.

Gibson also pitched much better than his counterpart, Tim Lincecum, who walked 6 batters and gave up 5 hits along with at least 2 wicked line drives for outs, both by Trevor Plouffe. However, the Twins had no luck in stringing hits and walks together (or were "unclutch" if you prefer), so Lincecum gets credited with both a "W" and a "quality start." It also didn't help when Dozier pulled a Torii in the first inning after a leadoff double. Hopefully, the Twins got all their mistakes out for this game because they will need to do better in the next two games if they want to go home with a winning record.

These are always trying times in my home as my wife is a Mariners fan. Well, at least she wants the Mariners to win more than any other sports team. Of course, she has zero interest in any sports team, so that's not saying much.

The main "conflict" in the home as such comes from our boys. Junior is staunchly a Twins fan and makes sure it is well known when the Twins and M's play each other. (It was he who called the Twins the "T's" after my wife loudly announced "Go, M's.")

Trey, being the younger brother, of course, cannot support anything his older brother supports and "feels sorry for Mommy" because no one else cheers for the Mariners when they play the Twins, so he cheers for the Mariners. I'm sure he'll eventually realize he's a full-time Twins fan as he gets older (his favorite players or Joe Mauer and Glen Perkins), but it's still disappointing when he cheers against the Twins.

Which is why it always nice to win against the Mariners. The Twins needed a rare series-opening victory (although it is starting to become more common now) since King Felix is looming on Sunday.

Kyle Gibson pitched how he needs to pitch to be successful. Limited walks (2, 1 of which scored the only run against him) a handful of strikeouts and a bunch of groundball outs.

The Twins hit the ball much better than the 5 runs would indicate. At one point, they had line-drive outs to infielders in 3 out of  4 batters and a number of well-hit outs to OFs as well.

The one concern was the bullpen, which nearly coughed up another lead. The bullpen's K rate, even when including Perkins' rate, is perilously close to the starting staff's. I was hoping to make that gap smaller this year, but I didn't expect a bullpen that was pretty much the same as last year's to have a big drop. Hopefully, it is just SSS since a number of relievers are well below their career K rates (Thielbar is one who is well down and was hit hard in this game).

At least the Twins are back to .500, and they finally have more victories as the Twins than they did as the Senators, which is really sad to happen so soon from the Senators' perspective.

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.