Indians 6 - 2 Twins

You know, you can ball my wife if she wants you to. You can lounge around here on her sofa, in her ex-husband's dead-tech, post-modernistic bullshit house if you want to. But you DO NOT get to run on Michael Cuddyer's arm!*

The Twins got scored on early, and scored on late, but they won the middle seven innings and that's... nowhere near enough to win. When I showed up and Punto and Rodriguez were covering the middle infield with Heintz catching, I kind of figured they weren't bringing their A game anyways. I thought Heintz was down in Rochester, and Punto is actually, officially, the worst hitter in Major League Baseball this year hitting about .130 since the All-star break. Apparently the Twins manager wasn't the only one not taking this game seriously, after Labor Day and the State Fair and with the Twins out of contention, a midweek game at noon didn't draw much of a crowd, and a lot of them left after three innings to get back to the office. (When Torii Hunter got hit across the hands by Fausto Carmona it was quiet enough to hear him cry out in pain.)

Nevertheless the current Twins so curiously fun to watch, because there are always some unusual events to delight and mystify (there's a reason they have that magic show commercial with Cuddyer sawing Santana in half). In some sort of homage to Ozzie Guillen, Scott Baker hit two batters in the first inning and gave up three runs, and the Indians never relinquished the lead but also never put the game away until the 9th, keeping things interesting. Nick Blackburn came in to relieve Baker in the 6th while I puzzled over the roster asking myself "Who the fuck is #53?", and after Neshek took over for him in the 9th and let two inherited runners score, Blackburn got charged with the first two earned runs of his career (sorry pal, welcome to the Twins). Until the 9th, the Twins were still in it, but hit into four double plays (including a line drive right back into the pitcher's glove) and got no extra base hits, so despite the best efforts of Torii Hunter advancing two bases on a wild pitch, and even Punto and Rodriguez producing in the 5th (a single and a sac fly) the Twins couldn't get enough hits strung together to score more than two runs.

What has been fun about the Twins in recent years has been to watch them put a lot of smart, small plays together into a monster that chews up central division teams and pins pennants on the outfield wall. There are the piranhas nipping away at the bases to manufacture runs, but there has also been the little defensive plays that save an extra base here and there, catch runners in bad situations, and prevent runners from getting across the plate, all of which adds up and is a hell of a lot of fun to watch for anyone who loves the game of baseball. Today the play that stood out in my mind, that made me laugh out loud with delight, even though it didn't affect the outcome of the game, was in the top of the 5th. Baker gave up a lead-off single to Ryan Garko but followed it with a couple of strike-outs to reduce the margin for error to zero, but the Indians came back firing. Jason Michaels singled as well to put Garko in scoring position, and then Casey Blake hit the ball deep into the right field corner, 327 feet from home plate (~100m) and Garko came around third headed home. Unfortunately Michael Cuddyer picked the ball up and threw it towards home plate like he'd fired it from a gun, the cut-off man judged it was on target and wisely let it go, and catcher Chris Heintz scooped the ball up a couple feet wide of the plate with plenty of time to scuttle back across and tag out a bewildered Garko to end the inning and keep the tribe from scoring... and that is why you MAY NOT run on Michael Cuddyer's arm.

I laughed my ass off when Garko had to sheepishly trot back to the dugout. Before that in the 4th the Indians had two runners in scoring position when Grady Sizemore hit a ground ball to Luis Rodriguez who fielded it then popped back up, ball cocked to throw, and lightly hopping on his feet shot a glare at 2nd and 3rd to freeze the runners, before throwing to 1st in time to catch Sizemore. Baker finished the 4th with two strike-outs (wisely giving the Twin killer in between the two strike-outs an intentional walk as long as 1st was open) with no runs scoring. Those kinds of plays kept it close to the end, and are a lot of what has made it a pleasure to watch the resurgent Twins. Now it only remains to be seen if they can only keep all the pieces together for a few more years, bounce back next year and ever get deeper into the play-offs.

W-Carmona
L-Baker
SV-Perez
Attendance 13,977 (about half of them gone by the 5th)

*-apologies to Messrs Mann & Pacino