Game One Hundred Three: Twins 4, Indians 2

via www.fangraphs.com

Jeremy Sowers going eight solid innings was the big story of the game. That is, if you view every game from now on as building towards 2009. The starting rotation that carried the Indians for a time has degraded quite a bit since May with the injury to Jake Westbrook, the trade of CC Sabathia, and the wheels coming off Aaron Laffey's season. 

But since we still care about winning and losing (otherwise why watch the game?), the key story of the game was not the outing of Jeremy Sowers but one at-bat in the top of the ninth inning. With a runner on second and two outs, Rafael Perez fell behind Justin Morneau. Even though the matchup at the plate was left-on-left, Morneau was the best hitter in the Twins' lineup, and hasn't had problems hitting left-handers this season (.300/.350/.446). Perez has been really good (.211/.309/.268) against left-handers this year, but why not make Delmon Young beat you instead? The counter-argument goes that putting another runner on would lead to a larger deficit, but since any deficit means that Joe Nathan is coming into the game, going all in to get one out should have been the strategy.