FAST REACTION PART II: THE REACTIONING Twins 3, White Sox 2

Unlike 2010, when an August doubleheader between these two teams would have been a glorious, pennant-tinged bloodbath, this one was all about both teams trying to see who could help them in 2014 and beyond.  (The White Sox even parted with veteran Alex Rios prior to this afternoon's game in a trade with the Rangers for a PTBNL/cash.)  This evening's starters were a case in point: rookie Charles Leesman for the White Sox, making his major league debut, and Liam Hendriks, back from Rochester and making an emergency start as the 26th man.

Leesman was effectively wild, throwing 113 pitches in five innings, striking out 8, walking 5, but only giving up one run on a Chris Herrmann solo dong.  Hendriks was much more efficient than Leesman, going 6 and 1/3 innings, striking out 3 and walking just 1 on 90 pitches.  He also made one more mistake than the Chicago starter, surrendering solo dingers to Alexei Ramirez and Blake Tecotte.

With 2 on and 1 out in the 7th, Gibson was pulled in favor of Meat Raffle, who got out of the jam on a strikeout and a very nice running catch from Clete Thomas.

The Twins evened the score in the 8th when Josh Willingham contributed a solo bomb of his own to lead off the inning. Minnesota had two runners on with one out, but failed to put the go-ahead run across, because they maybe wanted me to get half lit up again and write another game story like last Friday night.

After a scoreless ninth, and "free baseball" rearing its goddamn head like some kind of unkillable hellbeast, Oswaldo Arcia smashed a Dylan Axelrod pitch to dead centerfield for his second home run of the day, giving the Twins a 3-2 lead.  (He even flexed for the camera in the dugout.  I have a crush on Oswaldo Arcia.)  Glen Perkins held down the fort in the bottom of the frame, despite drilling the leadoff hitter, to get the save.  Brian Deunsing, winner of game one, was also the winner of game two, and some goofy fucking stat will probably be on the internet tomorrow about that.  SWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP

Robot Rollcall

Charts & Graphs

Source: FanGraphs

Enjoy your weekend, everybody.