Some good news today (assuming we can believe anything coming out of the organization’s medical staff) is that Delmon Young apparently has no ligament damage and should be ready to return to action when his DL time expires.
On a sad note, former Twins GM Howard Fox passed away at an Orlando hospice at the age of 90. Fox pretty much devoted his life to the Twins, having been involved with the franchise for something like 50 years in various capacities. Our thoughts and prayers are with his friends and family.
Tonight, we’ve got Joe Mauer DHing. This is actually encouraging to me in that Gardy has gotten past the standard “don’t catch Mauer in a day game after a night game” mentality and actually looked at pitching match ups to determine in advance what might be the best game to have him DH. Rather than having him catch tonight and Jim Thome DH against the Dodger lefty, Ted Lilly, Gardy will instead let Thome sit tonight and DH tomorrow against a righty. Seems like a small thing, but it shows more forethought that we’re accustomed to seeing out of the Twins manager, so that’s encouraging.
Here are the line ups:
| DODGERS | @ | TWINS |
| Gwynn, LF | Revere, CF | |
| Blake, 1B | Casilla, A, 2B | |
| Ethier, RF | Mauer, DH | |
| Kemp, CF | Cuddyer, RF | |
| Uribe, 3B | Valencia, 3B | |
| Thames, M, DH | Hughes, L, 1B | |
| Miles, 2B | Repko, LF | |
| Ellis, A, C | Rivera, R, C | |
| Carroll, SS | Nishioka, SS | |
| _Lilly, P | _Duensing, P |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | R | H | E | |
| LA Dodgers | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 7 | 1 |
| Minnesota | 1 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | x | 6 | 10 | 0 |
This was a rather unique win for the Twins… Brian Duensing fell short of a “quality start” and got bailed out a bit by the offense. Duensing actually pitched well for four innings, but walks were his downfall in the fifth. The bullpen did a nice job in relief and it was particularly nice to see Joe Nathan pitch a really nice 8th inning up against some tough hitters. Matt Capps had a few control issues in the 9th but got the save. Let’s buy a keg for the bullpen!
There was no shortage of offensive heroes tonight. In fact, when it came down to voting for BOD honors, it was pretty tough to name just one… or even two. So for the first time, we have tri-BODs. Ben Revere seemed like he was on base all night with two hits and a walk, leading to two runs. Luke Hughes provided the winning margin with a huge two-run home run in the 5th inning to break a 4-4 tie. And Jason Repko not only had two hits and scored two runs, he also had a huge assist, throwing a runner out at the plate from LF (yeah… maybe the call was a debatable but the umpire is always right, right?). Gentlemen… you are our BODs!
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