Twins at Tigers (8/9)

[Lynch]

Nice nice nice win for the Twins tonight at Detroit. Santana's first five innings were pretty much lights-out. Only gave up a couple of runs late on a 2 run shot in the 7th and also allowing a run in the 6th. Ten Strikeouts! Back on track for our ace.

Still, the Twins bats were swinging, but not getting people in. Twins were down 2-3 in the top of the 8th and had some catchup ball to play. Mauer walked, Cuddy struck out swinging and up comes the big M, Morneau. The big boy pops one out to deep right and the Twins are up 4-3. That ended up being the final score.

So there were a couple of key notes to tonights game. We took the series from Detroit, on the road. Good stuff. We are now tied with Chicago for 2nd place again. Good stuff. Morneau's HR make him the first Twin to knock out 30 since 1987




Good job Twins. Congrats to Morneau!

[Roy31]

Man I thought the twins were done after that Inge blast. Santana was left in too long and you could tell because he had little movement on his pitches in 7th. 1st pitch from Zumaya to MORNEAU and it was GONZO! What a sweet dinger to right. Nice win for the twinkies.

[DirtyKash]

I just heard a crazy stat: Morneau is the first Twin since 1987 to hit 30 homers. You're kidding me! In this era of juiced up big leaguers, it took almost 20 years for a Twin to hit 30? And the Twins have been a good team in that time too.

[Lynch]

Yep, (mentioned that above as well).

Goofy stat is that either ESPN or one of the other major news outlets said he was the first Twins player since 1987 when Gary Gaetti did it. Well, we had 3 guys in 1987 with over 30 home runs: Hrbek(34), Brunansky(32) and Gaetti(31) and Pucket had 28

Anyway, as for the Twins being good during that time frame..... the Twins were good in 1987 (obviously, with the WS win), they actually had more wins in 88, then started to drop off in 89 and 90 they stunk. 91, they rose back to the top in a worst-to-first world series win again, 92 they were good and then they pretty much sucked ass until they got lucky enough to be the best team in the worst division in baseball from 2002-04.

Fun stat: in both 1986 & 1987, as a team, the Twins hit 196 home runs (each year). Three years later (1990), the team hit 100. In the WS run of 1991, it went back up to 140 (ooooh) and in 92 dropped right back down to 105. I think if you averaged out the entire decade, the Twins probably averaged about 115 HRs/season (mighty sucky). Even as a team this year, they are only at 104 HRs (but it's the beginning of AUG).

[Roy31]

Thats crazy, good for morneau though hes got some mad pop.

[Molina00]

I was surprised about Morneau and his 30 too. I thought Torii Hunter surely would have done. I see his career high is only 29 though.