MINNESOTA 3, CLEVELAND 2 IN MINNESOTA
Date: Wednesday, September 24.
Batting stars: Lew Ford was 2-for-4 with a home run (his third), a triple, and two RBIs. Michael Cuddyer was 2-for-4 with a home run, his third.
Pitching stars: Kyle Lohse pitched six innings, giving up one run on four hits and no walks and striking out one. Eddie Guardado pitched a scoreless inning, giving up a hit and striking out one.
Opposition stars: Victor Martinez was 2-for-4. Ben Broussard was 1-for-4 with a home run, his sixteenth. C. C. Sabathia pitched seven innings, giving up two runs on seven hits and a walk and striking out three.
The game: The Indians got a man to second base with two out in the first and third, but did not score either time. They got on the board in the fourth, however, as Broussard hit a one-out home run. The Twins did not get a man to second base until the fifth and did not score until the sixth, when Ford homered with one out to tie it 1-1. The Twins then loaded the bases, still with one out, but a popup and a ground out ended the inning.
The Twins took a 2-1 lead in the seventh when Denny Hocking hit a two-out single and scored on a Ford triple. Cleveland tied it in the eighth. Jhonny Peralta led off with a walk, went to second on a passed ball, took third on a ground out, and scored on a wild pitch.
Cuddyer led off the bottom of the eighth with a home run to put the Twins back in front. Martinez hit a one-out single in the ninth for the Indians, but he did not get past first base.
WP: Jesse Orosco (2-1). LP: Rafael Betancourt (2-2). S: Guardado (41).
Notes: It was the day after the Twins clinched so it was even lower down the alphabet than a B lineup. Matthew LeCroy was behind the plate in place of A. J. Pierzynski. Justin Morneau was at first in place of Doug Mientkiewicz. Alex Prieto was at second in place of Luis Rivas. Hocking was at short in place of Cristian Guzman. Cuddyer was at third in place of Corey Koskie. Ford was in center in place of Torii Hunter. Michael Restovich was in left, Dustan Mohr in right, and Michael Ryan at DH. Rob Bowen replaced LeCroy at catcher in the seventh.
Ryan was 1-for-4 and was batting .347. Ford was batting .333. Restovich was 0-for-3 and was batting .304.
Prieto was 1-for-3 and was batting .167. Bowen made his first appearance since September 2 and was batting .000 (0-for-3).
Guardado lowered his ERA to 2.80.
Rick Reed gave up a run in 1.2 innings and had an ERA of 5.14. Orosco retired the only man he faced and lowered his ERA to 7.64. This would be his only win as a Twin.
Granted that Cleveland wasn't very good and was just playing out the season, it's still kind of impressive that the Twins were able to win playing a bunch of reserves and AAA players.
The Twins had won eleven in a row.
Record: The Twins were 89-69, in first place in the American League Central, six games ahead of Chicago.