May cruises, Hunter homers as Twins top Indians 7-2

Oh, wow. Man. Exhale, everybody. Just for a minute. The Twins have just won their second series in a row, they're 5-7, and the feeling around the team right now is a world apart from where it was this time last week. For a while there it really did feel like the team was going to go 20-142 this year, but no. Those nightmares where it all just went down in flames, all of us screaming in terror along the way - they were just nightmares.

Trevor May had one of the better starts of his young career, going six strong innings. He struck out four and allowed one run off of four hits, but three of those hits came in one inning. He pitched perfect frames in the first, fourth, and fifth. If Joe Mauer hadn't booted a play in the sixth, May would have had a fourth perfect inning today.

Most impressively, May largely seemed in command of his arsenal. His fastballs weren't always on the money, but they were largely good enough. He threw his changeup for strikes. The curveball missed the zone most of the time, but I don't think May uses the curve for the purpose of putting it in the strike zone.

The Twins got to TJ House early, striking for three runs in the second when six of the first seven batters of the inning reached safely. Shane Robinson pushed the lead to 4-1 in the fourth when he tallied one of his three hits. But the coup de grâce was Torii Hunter's three-run bomb in the sixth.

Carlos Santana would homer off of J.R. Graham in the ninth, and Graham would struggle a bit to close things out, but 7-2 was as close as Cleveland would get.

The pitching has been better this week. The offense has delivered enough of a punch to support some solid outings. And just like that, watching the Twins play baseball this summer feels like a much more palatable idea.

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kenzertz: "I'm trying to do some research to see if redheads pitch better at night vs the day time"

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