MINNESOTA 6, BALTIMORE 0 IN MINNESOTA
Date: Tuesday, August 13.
Batting stars: Doug Mientkiewicz was 3-for-4 with two home runs (his seventh and eighth) and a double, driving in three. David Ortiz was 2-for-4 with a home run (his fourteenth) and a double, driving in three. Jacque Jones was 2-for-2 with two walks.
Pitching star: Rick Reed pitched a complete game shutout, giving up five hits and a walk and striking out four.
Opposition stars: Geronimo Gil was 2-for-3. Jeff Conine was 2-for-4. Chris Brock struck out two in 1.2 scoreless innings, giving up one hit.
The game: There was no score, and no threat of a score, until the fourth. Jones led off the inning with a walk and Cristian Guzman singled. With one out, Ortiz hit a two-run double to put the Twins on the board. With two out, Mientkiewicz hit a two-run homer to put the Twins up 4-0. They added two more in the sixth on solo homers by Ortiz and Mientkiewicz. The Orioles got men to first and second in the fifth on a pair of singles and did so again in the same way in the seventh, but did not advance a man past second base.
WP: Reed (10-6). LP: Scott Erickson (5-11). S: None.
Notes: Torii Hunter was 1-for-4 and was batting .306.
A. J. Pierzynski was 0-for-4 to drop his average to .305.
People seem to remember David Ortiz as having been a bust with the Twins. In this season, his last with the Twins, he batted .272/.339/.500 with 20 homers and 32 doubles. Those might not be "Big Papi" numbers, but it's hardly a bust.
By game scores, this was Reed's second-best game of the season, barely beaten by a complete game in May. Given that he gave up a run in that game and pitched a shutout in this one, it could certainly be argued that his was a better game.
This was catcher Geronimo Gil's only season as a regular. Originally signed by the Dodgers, he was traded to Baltimore in 2001 and came up to the Orioles as a September call-up that year. He had hit well enough in the minors, but much of his time was spent in San Antonio and Las Vegas, both places where offensive numbers tend to be a little inflated. In this, his only full season in the majors, he batted .232/.270/.363, numbers which simply aren't good enough unless you're a tremendous defensive player. One assumes he was considered good behind the plate, but I could not really find out anything about that one way or another. He did throw out runners on 36% of steal attempts in 2002 (31% for his career), but of course there's a lot more to being a defensive catcher than that. The Orioles must have decided that his defensive abilities weren't enough, though, because he never got more than 169 at-bats in a season after this. And it's not like he was replaced by a Hall of Famer, either: Brook Fordyce was the regular in 2003. Gil stayed with the Orioles through 2005, then was released at the end of spring training 2006. He played in Mexico that year, then signed with Colorado in 2007. getting fourteen more major league at-bats. He kept playing Mexico all the way through 2016, although in his last year he had only nine at-bats. At last report he was living in Lagunas, Oaxaca, Mexico.
Record: The Twins were 71-49, in first place, leading Chicago by thirteen games.
