Series With the Royals

It was a good two-game home series for the Twins against the Royals, as they swept the Kansas City Royals, winning on Wednesday 5-4 and winning today 10-9. Wednesday's was a nice game, where the Twins blew some opportunities but still managed to squeak out a victory. Johan Santana racked up the usual 10 K and pitched a solid 7 innings, but a poor third in which he allowed four runs kept him from being able to get the win. Today's game, on the other hand, was quite a bit uglier. The Twins managed to score a bunch of their runs thanks to the poor fundamental play of the Royals. Dave Gassner, who had a great Major League debut last Saturday, was shaky and got hit hard. He didn't make it out of the second inning. Matt Guerrier then came in and while his outing wasn't all bad (he struck out 5 over 3.1 innings), he did allow two home runs that really hurt the team. Nonetheless, Lew Ford (who had 4 hits today) managed a 10th inning RBI single that won the game for the Twins and completed a two-game series sweep. Here are some quick thoughts on the series...

*Torii Hunter is becoming terrifying on the basepaths. He stole three more bases in the series, making him 9/9 on the season so far. The Twins are being very aggressive with Torii on the basepaths, and it is paying off. Not only is Hunter stealing bases, but he is really hitting the ball well. On the series, Torii went 5/8 with a home run and 3 RBI.

*I was at Wednesday's game, and in the fourth inning when the Twins loaded up the bases with no outs, I commented that I would bet twenty dollars that we wouldn't score a single run. The guy in the row ahead of me turned around and said he'd take the bet, but I chuckled and said I was just kidding. Too bad, I would've ended up being twenty bucks richer.

*The White Sox have managed to keep some distance between themselves and the Twins for first place as they just keep winning. The Sox are now 12-4 after beating Detroit 4-3 today. Chicago just isn't that good though, they're going to have to cool off sometime... right?

*Is there any better deal in the Majors than a Wednesday night at the Dome for a college student? I got to go see Johan pitch (from Upper GA, granted), got two hot dogs and a large pop, all for 10 bucks. Now that is value.

The Twins open up a three game series in Detroit tomorrow, with Carlos Silva making his return from the disabled list. It has been a rocky couple of weeks for Silva, as he was placed on the DL under the impression that he might miss the entire season due to knee surgery. Upon further review, doctors decided that Silva will be okay to pitch this season even with the tear in his knee, putting off surgery until the off-season. It should be interesting to see if he can throw as well as he did in his first start, when he held the Mariners to one run over seven innings in the third game of the year. Kyle Lohse, who has looked downright terrible so far this year, is being skipped in the rotation, so Joe Mays will pitch Saturday and Brad Radke will go on Sunday.