I still think #1 was a strike. And maybe #5 too. Mr. Plate Umpire Jim Wolf, can't we get a little bit of help here?
Baker's final line: 9 IP, 0 ER, 1 H, 1 BB, 9 K. His game score for the night was 93, the fifth-best start in the league this year. The four that were better were Buehrle and Verlander's no-hitters, Santana's 17K game, and Erik Bedard's 15K game. Had Baker finished the perfect game, he still would have been short of Bedard's score.
The last time a Twins pitcher tossed a perfect game would be, well, two days before never. Unless you relax the rules a little bit. In which case we can go back to August 6, 1967, when the Twins' Dean Chance set down the first 15 Red Sox to come to the plate, then watched as the rain came and washed out the game exactly one out after it became official.
Chance's final line was 5 IP, 4 K, 0 ER, 0 H, 0 BB. Over time, it's been knocked down from "perfect" to "trivia point," but it's the nearest thing the Twins have to a perfect game in team history.
Or did have, until tonight.