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Santana gets plenty of support in ending personal three-game skid

Aug 9, 2007 - 5:08 AM By Pat Madden PA SportsTicker Contributing Writer

KANSAS CITY, Missouri (Ticker) -- Johan Santana won his first game in nearly a month and Michael Cuddyer drove in three runs as the Minnesota Twins defeated the Kansas City Royals, 11-4, on Wednesday.

Santana (12-9), facing the Royals for the first time this season, allowed two runs and scattered eight hits in six innings while striking out six and walking two batters in earning his first victory since July 13 against Oakland. He won his ninth consecutive game against Kansas City dating to May 29, 2004.

"Tonight was a long game, took a long time between innings," Santana said after being removed after the sixth inning with a cracked middle fingernail on his left hand. "It was kind of tough to get into a rhythm, but I was fine. I was throwing all my pitches. Tonight, you see these guys hitting the ball well. It was missing for a long time, but it was good to see."

The two-time Cy Young Award winner upped his record against the Royals to 12-3 in 29 career games. He also improved to 2-3 since the All-Star Break after going a combined 19-3 after the break the previous two years.

"He's been Santana, we just haven't done anything offensively for him for a while," Minnesota manager Ron Gardenhire said. "Good pitchers have to have some breaks and score some runs. We haven't done enough of that for him.

"It was hot out there. It's hard to throw in that; it's a lot of hard work. We had a lot of very long innings where he sat in the dugout for a long time."

Cuddyer, who finished the night with three hits, hit a two-run home run in the third inning, a 442-foot blast to left-center into the water spectacular. That home run was the first for the Twins since July 31. He also had an RBI single in the first inning.

"I don't know if that what's sparked it or what, but we came out swinging the bats well tonight," Cuddyer said. "One through nine, everybody was pretty potent. It was good to see."

A five-run third inning, highlighted by Cuddyer's home run, allowed Minnesota to score more than three runs for the first time in its last seven games.

The middle of the order for Minnesota finished the game 10-for-19 with four runs, nine RBI and five extra-base hits. In addition to Cuddyer, No. 3 hitter Joe Mauer was 2-for-4 with two RBI, No. 4 hitter Justin Morneau collected two hits, scored twice and drove in a run while No. 5 hitter Torii Hunter was 3-for-5 with a double, home run and three RBI.

"It felt good," Hunter said. "Whenever you get runs, I don't care what team it is, whenever you get runs on the board, you've got to be happy about it. We hit the ball, we found some holes, we were lucky. We were hitting everything. Sometimes you've just got to take that."

"The little guys got on the bases and the big guys hit the ball," Gardenhire said. "We got a chance to relax in a ballgame and do something we haven't had a chance to do much of lately. We needed one of these. We scored some runs and came out swinging pretty good. A nice night for us."

Odalis Perez (6-11) surrendered six runs on seven hits in just three innings in absorbing his first defeat of the season against Minnesota. It was Perez's second-shortest outing of the season. He has lost three of his last four starts.

"We didn't know anything about it (Perez's legs hurting) before," Royals manager Buddy Bell said about Perez's leaving the game with leg soreness. "He said he felt it yesterday. It was more precautionary taking him out the way the game was going. We expect him to make his next start. We'll know more tomorrow."

Ross Gload and John Buck each collected three hits for the Royals, who had a season-high five-game winning streak at Kauffman Stadium snapped.