MILWAUKEE 3, MINNESOTA 2 IN MILWAUKEE
Date: Friday, June 20.
Batting star: Luis Rivas was 1-for-3 with a triple and a walk.
Pitching stars: Brad Radke pitched seven innings, giving up two runs on six hits and a walk and striking out five. LaTroy Hawkins struck out two in a scoreless inning, giving up a walk. Johan Santana struck out three in a scoreless inning, giving up a walk.
Opposition stars: Ben Sheets struck out eight in eight innings, giving up two unearned runs on three hits and one walk. Geoff Jenkins was 2-for-4 with a double and two RBIs. Royce Clayton was 2-for-4 with a double.
The game: Neither team got much going on offense until the fourth, when the Twins got on the board. Corey Koskie drew a one-out walk, went to second on a ground out, and scored on a wild pitch-plus-error to give the Twins a 1-0 lead.
The Brewers went ahead in the sixth. Eric Young and Scott Podsednik each singled with one out. Podsednik then stole second, putting men on second and third, and Jenkins delivered a two-run single to give Milwaukee a 2-1 lead. The lead only lasted for a half-inning, however, as Torii Hunter led of the seventh by reaching on an error, went to third on a Doug Mientkiewicz single, and scored on a sacrifice fly to tie it 2-2. Each team got a man to second in the ninth, but neither scored, so we went to free baseball.
The Twins put men on first and third with one out in the tenth, but a strikeout and a ground out thwarted them. In the bottom of the tenth Clayton led off with a double, went to third on a fly ball, and scored on a wild pitch to end the game in Milwaukee's favor.
WP: Curtis Leskanic (4-0). LP: Juan Rincon (1-3). S: None.
Notes: There was no DH. Bobby Kielty and Denny Hocking were used as pinch-hitters for pitchers. Justin Morneau pinch-hit for Dustan Mohr in the ninth. Lew Ford entered the game in right field in the bottom of the ninth.
Morneau was 0-for-1 and was batting .344. Mientkiewicz was 1-for-4 and was batting .307. Jacque Jones was 0-for-5 and was batting .305. Koskie was 0-for-3 and was batting .301.
Radke's ERA was 5.64, coming down from a high of 6.00. It would continue to go down, slowly but steadily, for the rest of the season.
Hawkins lowered his ERA to 2.10. Santana's ERA went down to 2.19.
When I have more time I'll have to do a profile of Royce Clayton, because he was one of my favorite players for reasons I don't remember. He was certainly never a star--he never led the league in anything and made just one all-star team, in 1997. But he was a steady ballplayer who played in over 100 games every year from 1993-2006, and played in 98 games in 1992. Most of those years he was a starting shortstop. His career numbers are nothing to shout about: .258/.312/.367. But major league mangers thought enough of him to keep writing his name in the lineup for the better part of fifteen consecutive seasons, so they clearly thought he had value.
Record: The Twins were 39-33, in first place in the American League Central, one game ahead of Kansas City.