Twins Player of the Weekend: Sweeping the Royals Edition

Player of the Game rules:

• We will be running regular polls to determine a Player of the Game from the afternoon or previous night game
• At the end of the year, we will tally all PotG winners
• Whichever player has the most PotG "wins" will have a donation made to a charity supported by that player (not sure how much, likely between $300 and $500)

Our first two winners of the season are Nick Blackburn and Anthony Swarzak, congratulations to those guys and thanks to everyone who has taken part in a vote so far. Now for our nominees for this weekend's four-game sweep of the Kansas City Royals.

Alexi Casilla: 8-for-15 with four walks, a pair of doubles and three stolen bases. It's impossible to accurately describe how important Casilla has been for the Twins recently, but looking at the success he had over these four games you can get a pretty good idea.

Matt Tolbert: 5-for-11 with three doubles, a triple and three runs batted in. Perhaps not as integral as Casilla as he played in three of the four contests, but considering the production the Twins have had out of their infield this year his performance out of the nine-hole was huge.

Anthony Swarzak: 6 IP, 2 R, 7 H, 1 K, 2 BB. For his second consecutive start, Swarzak defied the critics (including me) to deliver a big victory for the Twins in game one.

Carl Pavano: 9 IP, 2 R, 9 H, 4 K, 1 BB. As Stu said, a very 2010 performance. Secured at least a series split almost single-handedly, putting up eight zeroes in his nine innings of work, and kept the suspect bullpen off the field completely.

Brian Duensing: 8 IP, 0 R, 6 H, 4 K, 1 BB. Bouncing back after a tough month of May, Duensing delivered to lock down the series sweep and only had to turn the ball over to the 'pen for one inning.

Ben Revere: 6-for-17 with a walk, double, stolen base and four runs scored. Showed off some great speed on the bases and filled in for Span in games three and four of the series.