Athletics 4, Twins 2: Bats go cold

The A's jumped out to an early lead in the 2nd inning when Carlos Cortes smacked a 2-run homer to right. Fast forward to the 5th, with the Twins offense still struggling against lefty rookie Gage Jump, Taj threw 9 pitches and all of them were strikes for the first immaculate inning in Twins history. This was surprising to me, I figured Johan Santana or somebody must have done it before, but I guess not.

Things were still looking great for Taj two outs into the 6th inning, but a single by Lawrence Butler , an RBI double by Tommy White, and an RBI single by Donovan Walton pushed their lead to 4 runs.

The one hit the Twins had in the first 6 innings against Jump was a pop up that landed 5 feet from the pitcher's mound in the 4th. I'm not sure how this is considered a hit, but it does help Royce Lewis ' batting average, I guess. In the top of the 7th, Royce got himself a "real" hit with a line drive to left. One out later, Kaelen Culpepper doubled to bring in the Twins first run. Then a Brooks Lee double put two in scoring position for Victor Caratini , who grounded out for an RBI to make it a 2-4 game. The final chance for the Twins tonight came with 2 on and 2 out for Luke Keaschall , but he struck out looking to end the threat.

To add injury to insult, Buxton had to leave the game after appearing to aggravate his hip chasing down a ball in the gap in the 7th inning.

In the standings, the Twins sit at 64-69 and may fall to 3 games back in the wild card hunt. Also, the Royals have won 9 straight somehow.

Taj Bradley : 6.2 IP, 7 H, 4 ER, BB, 11 K, Immaculate inning

Four hits as a team just isn't gonna cut it usually, and it definitely didn't tonight.