Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Twins Win 5th in a Row--AL Central Officially a Dogpile

The Twins win their fifth game with a walk-off single from Delmon Young (his fourth hit of the game), and overcame some spotty pitching to beat the Baltimore Orioles 7-6.

You want to talk about an important player in this game, and I'm as shocked as anyone that I'm about to say this: "Jesse Crain". A well-deserved target for criticism for much of the season, Jesse Crain came into a game in the 7th inning after the Twins had crawled back from a 6-3 deficit by scoring three runs in the bottom of the sixth.

Crain came out and pitched two innings of perfect ball--six up, six down and looked pretty damn dominant. He gave up a double in the top of the 9th, but not on a bad pitch at all. Consider that prior to Crain's entrance, the Twins had used three pitchers (Gabino, Humber, and Keppel) through six innings and all three had given up at least one run, and none of them had managed to finish three innings. Crain's dominance was surprising, and hugely important to a team that had been coming from behind all game long.

The Twins are now 63-63, tied with the White Sox--both will find themselves either 3.5 or 4.5 games behind Detroit depending on what happens to the Tigers in Anaheim (as of now, the game is tied in the sixth inning. These three teams play each other a sick amount the last two weeks of the season. The AL Central is an absolute dogpile, and that's a good deal better than it being a division that the Tigers run away with.


1 comment:

Jess said...

I still don't trust Jesse Crain any farther than I can throw him.