This is where things get kind of interesting. The Twins have just a half-game lead over the kittycats as they head in to this 3 game series. Gardy is celebrating the return of the DH role by inserting Mr. Thome in the lineup. I’m not sure he’ll know how to handle having to pick up a bat more than once in a game, but we’ll see how things work out. Cuddy gets yet another start at 3B… this time at home. I’m still not sure I like the idea, but looking at this lineup, there really is no excuse for not scoring at least five or six runs, no matter who’s on the mound against them. – JC
| Detroit | @ | Minnesota |
| Jackson, A, CF | Span, CF | |
| Santiago, 2B | Hudson, O, 2B | |
| Raburn, LF | Mauer, C | |
| Cabrera, M, 1B | Morneau, 1B | |
| Boesch, RF | Kubel, RF | |
| Guillen, C, DH | Cuddyer, 3B | |
| Inge, 3B | Thome, DH | |
| Laird, C | Young, D, LF | |
| Worth, SS | Punto, SS | |
| Bonderman, P | Liriano, P |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | R | H | E | |
| Detroit | 4 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 7 | 13 | 1 |
| Minnesota | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 11 | 1 |
CB – ok, this game just sucked. This is not the time for Liriano to have issues when we are having other issues too… glad to see that he pulled his head out of his butt after the first few innings and got back to throwing well. The epic moment of the game was Jim Thome hitting his first TRIPLE since 2004. Wow. There is much debate about whether it was better than Redmond’s. Of course, he also followed that with a LONG bomb to actually get the Twins back in the game. Sadly, it takes 9 players to do that, not just one.
The joy of tonight’s game was ended shortly after with a relatively normal looking pitch from Joel Zumaya and the very tragic reaction after the follow-through. I was going to post video if I could find it but I didn’t really have the heart to keep looking at it. It’s really painful to watch. However, if you missed the original event and are perplexed at the reactions from other fans, you can go here to SB Nation. What you can’t see in the video is the hand just trembling uncontrollably while the training staff runs out to him. It was really a very scary moment for everyone in the park.
Our thoughts go out to him and we hope he is feeling better soon and that the news is better than it looked on the mound.