The Twins posted a nice albeit oddly uncomfortable win in their first inter-league game of the season, carpet bombing the F-Bomb by scoring early and often on Pirate's starter and former Twin Francisco Liriano. Brian Dozier led off the Twins offensive attack with a solo homer in the first. In a wild six-run second inning, Suzuki started things off by scoring on a wild pitch. Trevor Plouffe capped the inning with a two-run blast that in between saw Joe Mauer drive in three runs with a bases-clearing single. The Twins ended their scoring in the third when Suzuki crossed home on a ground-ball double play off the bat of Robinson. With eight on the board and a seven run lead after three, it seemed like the game was in the bag, but this is baseball and there would be cause for concern before this one ended.

The Pirates got on the board in the bottom of the second when Jose Tabata sort of singled on a two-out ground ball that Dozier should have handled to end the inning but didn't, allowing Jung Ho Kang to score from third base. The Bucs added another run in the fourth inning when Pedro Alvarez literally boated a blast off Nolasco over the right-field wall and into a docked runabout. With two runners in scoring position and one out in the bottom of the fifth, the Pirates chalked another run on a 6-3 putout off the bat of Kang, driving in Neil Walker. Nolaco gave up another run in the sixth inning when Walkers double to right field with runners on the corners scored Josh Harrison. With Aaron Thompson relieving in the seventh, Marte scored the last Pirate run on a Harrison single.

Damn near a quarter of the way through the season, the Twins find themselves in fairly unfamiliar territory, holding third place a half game behind the Tigers and just three games the behind division-leading Royals. I have to admit that I'm enjoying the ride so far, even as I wonder how long the engine will hold up when it's sort of low on oil and coolant, and the gas gauge is broken so I'm not sure if we're going to run out of fuel next week or next month, and at least a couple of the tires are nearly bald and could blow out any time now. There are problems with this team's pitching and defense (Danny Santana has ten of the Twins' 25 errors this year, contribution greatly to his team-low -0.7 WAR) but so far the offense has been good enough to get us where we are - five games above .500 and averaging 4.5 runs per game with a +2 differential. It ain't exactly championship caliber, but it's good enough to make things interesting and keep the puppy photographers in business for the time being.