A fantastic, albeit unusual game from staff ace Johan Santana paired with four Mets erros led the way for Twins to walk away with a big win in game two of their three game set with the NL East leaders.
Santana pitched a complete game shutout, the second of the month for the Twins, the other being Carlos Silva's game against the Braves. The oddity in the game wasn't in Johan's dominance, thats obviously par for the course, the oddity was in the fact that Johan struck out only 1 batter, that being Paul Lo Duca for the second out in the 9th inning. Behind him, Santana received solid defense, especially from Jason Bartlett who snared a few hard hit balls, helping to keep the Mets off the board. At the end of the night Santana finished with just four hits allowed and no walks. While it wasn't typical, I for one am thrilled. Santana had been having trouble all season with getting into many deep counts and often failing to work deep into games, hopefully this game will show a reversing of that trend. As we're now into mid-June, its certainly time that Santana begins to dominate as he always does. If he can begin to find a happy medium between his pitch counts and strikeouts he could have his best season yet.
The bats were solid tonight if unspectacular as the Twins managed 13 hits, but just three extra base hits, all doubles. After being held to four singles last night, the Twins clearly find themselves in yet another small ball rut. While the Twins did score nine runs, clearly one must wonder how many fewer it would've been had the team not received the aid of four errors from the Mets.
The Good
- Johan Santana: 9IP, 4H, oBB, oK, 0R. Nothing more to say.
- Jeff Cirillo: 3-5, one double, one run, one RBI. Tonight brings his average up to .253. Unspectacular indeed but if he can continue to hit, it may force the Twins to consider making Cirillo a regular fixture at 3B.
- Jason Bartlett: Went 2-5 raising his average to .247 and scored a run while making a few solid plays on defense in support of Johan's gem.
- Justin Morneau: No fireworks tonight but a solid 2-5 with a pair of singles bring his average up to .279 after a recent dip.
- Joe Mauer: a 2-4 performance with a double, a walk, two runs and and RBI hopefully signals the end of his "drought."
The Bad
- Luis Castillo: Another 0-fer has Luis 0-21 over the past 4 games and his average down to .306. This of course closely following the heels of Torii calling him "twofer," for two hits a game.
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