Sonny Gray entered the game with a sterling 2.01 ERA, and had allowed just five home runs all season. He'd never given up a grand slam.
This is the literary device known as "foreshadowing."
Brian Dozier led off the game with another dong stroke, his 20th jack of the season. After a mild threat in the second, the Twins bats went quiet in the middle innings as Gray dominated innings three through five.
Meanwhile, Ervin Santana was taking advantage of Oakland's enormous ballpark, piling up fly ball outs upon fly ball outs. Oakland managed to load the bases in the third on a Dozier error and a couple singles, but Santana escaped unscathed.
In the sixth, the Twins got to Gray on the strength of a Dozier walk, a Torii Hunter single, a FANTASTIC Miguel Sano walk, and a Trevor Plouffe bases-loaded home run, or "grand slam" in baseball's obscure vernacular. It was a hanging breaking ball that came off Plouffe's bat like a medium-deep fly, but it just kept *going*. So that was cool.
And Santana just kept getting outs. A couple harmless 2-out singles in the sixth and seventh did no harm before he was finally chased with two on and two out in the eighth. Brian Duensing lucked into an at 'em liner to snuff the threat, then pitched a 1-2-3 ninth. Ballgame, first victory in a Twins uniform for Santana.
The Twins have now won 50 games. To put that in perspective, they sucked the last four years.
Robot Roll Call
# | Commenter | # Comments |
---|---|---|
1 | Brananorama | 87 |
2 | myjah | 66 |
3 | SooFoo Fan | 32 |
4 | Win-MIN-Twins | 17 |
5 | twinsgirl197 | 13 |
6 | montanatwinsfan | 11 |
7 | Nick Rothe | 11 |
8 | wayback | 6 |
9 | natradamus | 4 |
10 | MNWildcat | 4 |
11 | Manna from Heaven | 4 |
12 | James Fillmore | 3 |
13 | twinscrazy_german | 3 |
14 | sdsujacks | 3 |
15 | haydenaudette51 | 2 |
16 | DedicatedFollowerOfFashion | 1 |
17 | Luke in MN | 1 |
Charts & Graphs
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