Twins Recap; Twins 3, Pirates 5

Twins-Pirates Boxscore 3/30/2007

The Twins traveled to Bradenton to take on the Buccaneers and Ramon Ortiz who Gardenhire announced will be the Twins #3 pitcher got the starting nod. Ortiz, who was ruffed up a bit in his last outing after an otherwise stellar pre-season came into the game sporting a 3.86 ERA and pitched even better than that going four innings while giving up only one single. Ortiz didn't over-power anyone but did a good job keeping the Pirates bats off-balance mixing up his pitches, and location. Text book pitching really. While the Twins lost the game, all of the Pirates offense came in the bottom of the eighth against 22 year-old Beloit reliever David Shinskie who was clearly over-matched giving up five runs on five hits while recording only one out. Other than that the Twins got two scoreless frames from Matt Guerrier and Juan Rincon along with a couple outs from Twins pitching prospect Kyle Waldrop.

After a scorching hot night at the plate last night the Twins bats cooled off substantially while facing off against young Pirates lefty Tom Gorzelanny who was on fire giving up only two runs on four hits and one walk while striking out eight. The Twins for the game only managed five hits all by either bench players or guys who will begin the year in the minors as the regulars for the most part had the night off. In an ironic note, much maligned third catcher Chris Heintz got the start behind the plate and made good hitting a home run off Gorzelanny.