Twins Win, Indians Loss Puts Minnesota Ahead of Indians

The Minnesota Twins youth movement has erased a poor start to catapult them ahead of Cleveland's Indians into third place in the AL Central. For those fans not following the AL Central, it's the undisputed best division in baseball, with the defending world champion ChiSox trailing only Detroit for the best record in baseball. Add to that the suddenly surging Twins & you've got the best division in the majors.

As I noted Thursday night, the Twins will play only interleague games the rest of June. Friday night, they started with a come-from-behind win against the Pittsburgh Pirates in a matchup of two of the top young pitchers in baseball, Twins lefthander Fransisco Liriano & Pittsburgh's Ian Snell.

It looked like the Twins might not notch their fifth straight victory after Snell walked & Pirates' leadoff hitter Craig Wilson hit a homerun on a 3-2 count. Those were the only runs that the Pirates would get tonight. Liriano, already a dominant starter, pitched 7 strong innings, striking out a career-high 11 hitters on his way to his sixth win.
Liriano is now 5-1 with a miniscule 1.50 ERA as a starter. His complete statline in his six starts is 36 innings pitched, with only 6 earned runs, 20 hits allowed & 35 strikeouts.
Snell pitched well, too, through six innings. The dam burst when Nick Punto coaxed a leadoff walk after falling behind 0-2. The Twins' Joe Mauer followed that up with a hit. Michael Cuddyer doubled, scoring Punto easily & moving Mauer, who's leading the majors in hitting at .381, to third. Justin Morneau hit a sacrifice fly to bring in Mauer. Torii Hunter, the Twins' clubhouse leader, lined a single to center to drive in Cuddyer to complete the rally.

The Twins scored an insurance run in the top of the ninth before turning the game over to closer Joe Nathan, who only needed 7 pitches to finish the Pirates off.

Meanwhile, the Indians kept their slump going, losing to the mediocre Milwaukee Brewers in Milwaukee. The Brewers jumped all over Indians ace C.C. Sabathia for 4 runs in the bottom of the first. With that lead, Brewers starter Chris Capuano challenged hitters, striking out 12 in his 7 innings to collect his seventh win against four losses.
Though Hugh Hewitt is certain to argue, the better team (the Twins) is now in third place. I'm certain that he'll try & relive ancient history by citing the Indians' early season sweep of the Twins. Of course, that's before moving Liriano into the rotation & long before the Twins' young lefthanded hitters got their act together.
Just to show that Twins' blogging fans aren't sore winners, I'm asking Minnesota bloggers to drop Hugh an email expressing your condolences. After all, we have the Minnesota Nice reputation to uphold.


Posted Saturday, June 17, 2006 12:11 AM

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