Rays Paste De Vries, Twins 12-6

On an absolutely perfect night for baseball, Cole De Vries had absolutely nothing, as the Rays chased him before he could get out of the second inning on their way to a 12-6 beatdown of the Twins on Friday.

Tampa jumped on De Vries right away, with Matt Joyce putting a 2-run dong in the Thome area in the top of the first. The Eden Prairie native escaped the inning without any further damage, but even the outs were drilled, so it wasn't surprising that the second was an out-and-out disaster. To wit: single, double, Jamey Carroll error, single, double, strikeout, double, showers. Jeff Manship entered the game, allowed another run that was charged to De Vries, who ended up with 7 ER and the shortest start of his Twins career.

Although the game was essentially over right then and there, give the Twins offense credit for not clocking out. Joe Mauer and Josh Willingham answered the Rays' intial salvo in the bottom of the first with a double and an RBI single, respectively. After it became a laugher, Mauer got his own RBI single in the third to make it 8-2, and Ryan Doumit's solo HR in the fourth narrowed the lead to five.

...aaaaaaaand that was as close as it got. Although the Manship held the line until the 6th, he finally got touched up for four more runs, all earned, although two of them came after he handed off to Luis Perdomo. The Twins scored a few more runs in garbage time, but it just delayed the postgame fireworks display.

Studs: Mauer (3-4, 2B, RBI), Span (2-5, 3B), and, oh, hell, Manship for pitching 4 innings and saving the bullpen from getting totally blitzed.

Duds: Cole De Vries, this one's all yours tonight. Better luck next time.

Enjoy your weekend, everybody