JULY 28, 2009 -- MINNESOTA 5, CHICAGO 3

An incredible pitching performance by Mark Buehrle goes for naught, as his attempt for a second consecutive perfect game became all too serious, but the Twins come back against Buehrle and beat the Sox again under the Teflon, 5-3. Buehrle set a major league record by retiring 45 batters in a row, which spanned three starts (most obviously his perfect game last Thursday made up for most of that streak), but invariably his perfect game was broken up when he walked the .160-hitting Alexi Casilla. The no-hitter was spoiled a batter later when Denard Span singled cleanly to center, and the shutout was ruined when Scott Podsednik lost a catchable ball in the roof for a Joe Mauer double that tied the score. The Twins would benefit from a miscue by second baseman Chris Getz in the seventh, who inexplicably dashed towards second to play Joe Crede's squibber to the right side of the infield; that moved Michael Cuddyer to third with nobody out and RBI hits by Brendan Harris and (yes) Nick Punto ended Buehrle's night. Punto's hit was pure Punto -- an ugly, inside-out blooper to right field that found some open real estate. But, as they say in baseball, it was a liner in the boxscore, and when you're flirting with .203, you'll take them anyway you can get them.


Scott Baker pitched impressively for the Twins, too, though his performance was certainly trumped by Buehrle's incredible run. Jose Mijares notched his first major league win and Joe Nathan came in to get the save once Bobby Keppel again failed to shut the door in the ninth. Keppel needs to go back to the minors now, as he just doesn't have the stuff that late-inning relievers (successful ones, at least) have. Nathan's been racking up the cheap saves this season, as nine of his saves have been in games which he has entered the game with a three-run lead or more or has pitched less than one inning and has been credited with a save. In most years, Nathan struggles to get save opportunities, but in a sense it's his sort of comeuppance this year. He's on track to get around 45 saves this season, which would be a career-high. He's been an unbelievable closer in his Twins career. Once in six seasons has his ERA been above 2; that was in 2005, when he posted a 2.70 ERA that looks really high when you compare it to the other ERAs that he's put up in his other five seasons: 1.62, 1.58, 1.88, 1.33, and 1.59. There's really only one other closer that has matched that sort of consistency over the last six years, and he's a little guy named Mariano Rivera. Considering all the bullpen woes the Twins have that continue to go unaddressed, Joe Nathan has to be one of the most valuable players on the Twins. It's yet another reason to shake your head as to how Ron Gardenhire has managed this team: he's arguably got two of the top five hitters in the league on his team and one of the top three closers, and he's only been able to steer that group to a couple of first-round defeats in the playoffs (and those teams had the best starting pitcher in baseball, too), and this year's version barely has their heads above water at 51-50. Unbelievable.

It was a key win for the Twins, however. I'd like to address another baseball-related topic that I'm struggling to make sense of, and that is the Red Sox retired Jim Rice's number 14 yesterday in a pre-game ceremony. Let me just try to figure this out -- the guy was just inducted into the Hall of Fame on Sunday, he's been retired for twenty years, and now the Red Sox retire his number? I think that's a good indication that this guy should not have been voted into the Hall of Fame -- the only team that he ever played for didn't acknowledge his greatness to one franchise until Cooperstown came calling. I'm not here to say that Rice was a bad player -- he was a superb hitter, a stupendous run producer and a true ambassador for the game. But is he Hall of Fame material? I don't think so. We're talking about the Hall of Fame, people -- Ted Williams, Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron...Jim Rice? Look, the guy was a very good ballplayer in his era, but the Hall of Fame isn't about honoring very good ballplayers. It's for honoring the best of the best. When the Red Sox went on the road, did fans from different cities go out to watch Jim Rice play like they do for Albert Pujols or Alex Rodriguez? And while we're at it, I think the Hall needs to reconsider its voting rules. A fifteen year stretch on the ballot is too long and I think it provides the opportunity for very good players (but not Hall-of-Famers) to sneak in at the end of that tenure simply because the voters have been seeing that name for over a decade. If you can't be voted in after five years, why should you get voted in after fifteen? I guess the Red Sox felt forced to retire Rice's number after the Hall of Fame voted him in; to me, if you're a great ballplayer, you'd think you would be honored by your team shortly after you retired. I still don't understand that one.