Minneapolis - If there is one thing we've learned from these baseball playoffs, it's that you don't question Ron Gardenhire.
The manager of the Minnesota Twins, the man with the Midas touch, was right again Tuesday.
He started Joe Mays in the opening game of the American League Championship Series at the Metrodome against the Anaheim Angels. This was the same Joe Mays who stunk up the Bay Area with his Game 2 performance against Oakland in the opening round of the playoffs.
Remember that performance, or have you blocked it out? Let us refresh your memory: Six runs and nine hits in 3Xc innings in a game that quickly got away from the Twins.
It was bad enough that legions of newborn, reborn and possibly unborn Twins fans were calling for Gardy to bypass Mays in the pitching rotation in favor of another starter or reliever Kyle Lohse.
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Let us overlook the once-unfathomable idea that folks are again charged up enough about the Twins to actually second-guess the manager and simply give you a new set of numbers on which to chew:
Eight innings, four hits, one run, zero earned runs, zero walks, three strikeouts.
And the most important numbers of all: Twins 2, Angels 1.
Minnesota has a leg up on the road to the World Series, thanks mostly to a brilliant performance from Mays.
"I didn't really ever lose faith," Gardenhire said.
Gardenhire was rewarded with what Mays called "the game of his career."
Considering his career record is 34-47, that isn't exactly like Mike Mussina or Greg Maddux making a similar statement.
But those outstanding pitchers had nothing on Mays on this night. Except for the third inning, when singles by Adam Kennedy and David Eckstein were followed by a Little League error by Cristian Guzman on a grounder hit by Darin Erstad, the Angels were swinging at shadows all night.
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After a single by Brad Fullmer in the fourth, Mays retired the last 13 batters he faced.
The Angels, who swung the bats like King Kong in eliminating the mighty New York Yankees, looked like their Rally Monkey mascot against Mays.
"Major league pitchers have great stuff and when you locate your stuff it makes you very effective," Erstad said. "That's the bottom line with good pitching. He executed his pitches very well. The mistakes he did make we fouled off and we didn't do that in the series. That's baseball."
It was all about the changeup for Mays, as it always is when he's effective. Erstad even admitted he was fooled by a Mays changeup on his single in the first inning, but managed to get enough of the pitch to knock it to left field.
"For fans, they have a tendency to think when a guy is nasty it's a guy throwing 100 miles an hour like Nolan Ryan or Roger Clemens," Angels first baseman Scott Spiezio said. "As hitters, the nastier guys are guys like Jamie Moyer who might not break 85 but they have that nasty changeup and curveball that gets up there at 58 to 75 miles an hour. If you're locating that kind of stuff, it can be effective. Joe Mays throws a little harder, but his best pitch tonight was his changeup. He was locating it and throwing a strike with it whenever he wanted."
It was a different pitcher than the one who took the mound in Oakland and never gave his team a chance. Mays didn't pitch to his strengths in that game. Instead of throwing his dependable changeup to Eric Chavez in the first inning, he threw a slider. It hung. Chavez belted it out of the park for a three-run homer. Game over.
Not this time. Suddenly the Angels have one more pitcher to worry about in Minnesota's already-deep rotation.
"The first opportunity, I think I was just a little nervous," Mays said. "I didn't have the stuff I had tonight. It just showed."
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Said Gardenhire: "That's the Joe Mays we envision right there. Going right after hitters, making them swing the bats, going right at them, attacking. That's what he did tonight. That's a pretty good performance, I would say."
It was also a pretty good performance by the manager, never losing faith in Mays when there were many others who did.
Readers can reach Mike McFeely at (701) 241-5580 or mmcfeely@forumcomm.com
