UPDATE: 5 Live Sports Extra’s schedule has now changed
This evening’s game on BBC 5 Live Sports Extra brings together two division leaders from the American League.Â
Texas Rangers lead the AL West by eight games and appear primed for their first playoff appearance since 1999. 2010 has been a tumultuous year off the field for the Rangers, with a messy ownership change and manager Ron Washington being found to have taken cocaine. However, far from being distractions, these events have brought the club together.
In contrast, things couldn’t have gone any better off the field for the Minnesota Twins this year. All-Star catcher, reigning MVP and all-round Minnesotan hero Joe Mauer signed an eight-year contract extension over the offseason and the team finally opened a beautiful new outdoor ballpark, Target Field, replacing the much-maligned Metrodome. The Twins lead the AL Central by 3.5 games ahead of the Chicago White Sox.
Nat Coombs and Josh Chetwynd will be presenting the action from 7 p.m. (first pitch is scheduled for 7.10). Not only can you listen in via DAB radio and digital TV, the show is now also available online for UK residents at the BBC.co.uk website.Â
The series so far
Sometimes teams can take a while to find their feet at a new home and that was a slight concern for the Twins’ division-winning hopes heading into the season as the unique nature of the Metrodome had previously given them a significant home-field advantage.
Twins fans had nothing to worry about as their team is 44-23 at Target Field and the most recent two wins have come at the expense of the Rangers. They edged the opener 4-3 on Friday night as emergency starter Matt Fox held Texas to two runs over 5.1 innings and Denard Span singled home the go-ahead run in the seventh inning.Â
The Twins followed up that success with a commanding 12-4 victory yesterday in a day game on FOX. Jim Thome went deep twice, the first a mighty upper-deck blast to right-field, to match and then pass Mart McGwire for ninth on the all-time home run list with 584 round-trippers. Carl Pavano pitched eight strong innings to earn his sixteenth win of the season.
Today’s starting pitchers
C.J. Wilson has been a revelation for the Rangers this season. The former relief pitcher moved into the rotation at the start of the year and he has held onto his place in impressive style, going 14-5 in his twenty-seven starts with a 2.88 ERA.Â
His one Achilles heel has been the base-on-balls as Wilson leads all AL pitchers in giving up 77 free passes; however he has counteracted this by leading the league in allowing the fewest hits per nine innings (6.67).
The Twins will turn to Nick Blackburn today as they go for the series sweep. It’s been a difficult year for the right-hander as his ERA is a full two runs higher this season than in 2009 (6.04 compared with 4.03) and his struggles resulted in him being sent down to Triple-A at the end of July.Â
He was called back up to the Big Leagues for a start against Texas on 23 August and although he took the loss, he didn’t pitch badly (three earned runs conceded over seven innings) and he followed that up with an excellent showing against the Mariners last Saturday. Blackburn was used as an emergency reliever against the Detroit Tigers on Thursday and that didn’t go so well as he gave up the game-winning home run to Gerald Laird. However, the Twins hope that his two most recent starts show that he has turned the corner and will carry forward that encouraging form today.
