MINNESOTA 5, TAMPA BAY 0 IN TAMPA BAY
Date: Thursday, May 8.
Batting stars: Dustan Mohr was 2-for-4 with a double and two runs. Corey Koskie was 1-for-2 with two walks.
Pitching star: Kyle Lohse pitched a complete game shutout, giving up five hits and no walks and striking out three.
Opposition star: Rocco Baldelli was 2-for-4.
The game: The Twins opened the game with singles by Jacque Jones, Cristian Guzman, and Koskie, plating a run. A double play took them out of the inning, but the Twins led 1-0. Mohr led off the second with a double, Doug Mientkiewicz singled to put men on first and third, A. J. Pierzynski doubled home a run, and a ground out brought home another, making it 3-0 Twins.
It remained 3-0, with neither team building much of a threat, until the seventh. Mohr singled, went to second on a passed ball, and scored on an error to make it 4-0. They added one more in the eighth when Guzman reached on an error, went to second when Koskie walked, took third on a double play, and scored on a Torii Hunter double.
The Devil Rays only once got a man as far as second base. Al Martin led off the second with a single and stole second with one out. He was stranded there.
WP: Lohse (3-3). LP: Dewon Brazelton (0-1). S: None.
Notes: Bobby Kielty was the DH. The Twins made no in-game lineup substitutions.
Jones was 1-for-4 and was batting .333. Kielty was 0-for-4 and was batting .304.
Luis Rivas was 0-for-4 and was batting .188.
By game scores, this was Lohse's second-best game of the season, second to his eight innings of shutout ball on April 3. He threw 101 pitches. He would pitch very well through the middle of June, then pitch quite poorly until mid-September, when he got it going again. His ERA was 3.57 at this point.
Tampa Bay's starter, Brazelton, did not pitch badly. He went seven innings, giving up four runs (three earned) on seven hits and two walks and struck out three. This was only his second game of the season and just the fourth of his major league career. I don't mean to be unkind to him, but he simply was not a good major league pitcher. His best season was 2004, when he went 6-8, 4.77, 1.44 WHIP in 120.2 innings (22 games, 21 of them starts). For his career he was 8-25, 6.38, 1.68 WHIP in 271 innings (63 games, 43 of them starts). He wasn't very good in AAA, either--14-19, 4.55, 1.44 WHIP in 219.2 innings (42 games, 41 of them starts). He was drafted third overall, behind Joe Mauer and Mark Prior, which is probably why he got as many chances as he did. But he walked too many guys, didn't strike out very many, and really had no business having as long a career as he had. He does have an interesting life story, though, and I encourage you to read the SABR biography of him.
It was yet another series sweep the Twins were involved in, their eighth in ten series. The Twins had won four in a row and eight of nine.
Record: The Twins were 18-15, in second place, three games behind Kansas City.