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The White Sox racked up season highs for hits and runs in an inning last night in defeating the hated Minnesota Twins, 5-2, in their first game in Target Field.  Let's take a closer look at what happened in the top of the fifth:

• Alex Rios, who has now hit safely in a dozen consecutive games, singled, stole second (his 10th of the year), and advanced to third when the ball got away on the throw.
• Carlos Quentin struck out.  (I'll save myself some time later by copying and pasting that sentence.)
• Mark Teahen drew a walk.
• Gordon Beckham, dropped to eighth in the order, showed why by striking out.
• Alexei Ramirez doubled to the wall in left center, plating Rios and Teahen.
• Juan Pierre, who collected three hits on the night to raise his batting average to .244, singled Ramirez to third.  One of those hits finally raised his slugging percentage above his batting average -- for the math challenged among you, that means he hadn't had an extra-base hit all year.
• A.J. Pierzynski, tied with his hitting coach, Greg Walker, for 622nd place on the all-time home run list at 113, took advantage of batting second in the order by doubling in Ramirez and Pierre.
• Andruw Jones singled home A.J.
• Paul Konerko moved Jones to second with a base hit.
• Alex Rios, up for the second time in the inning, loaded the bases with a single.
• Carlos Quentin struck out.  (As promised above, I cut and pasted that sentence.)  Q whiffed three times on the night and basically can't hit his way out of a paper bag right now.

That's five runs on seven hits, a walk, a stolen base, and an error for the Sox's best inning of the year.  And all the runs scored after two outs.

Freddy Garcia evened his record at 2-2 by lasting 7.0 innings while allowing the Twins nine hits and two walks.  Matt Thornton, who had been talked about as the possible new closer, retained his set-up role, pitching a scoreless eighth.  And Bad Bobby Jenks took advantage of a low-leverage save situation by tossing a scoreless ninth.  Jenks did give up a pinch-hit double to Jim Thome and, according to The Trib, threatened to toilet paper Thome's house if the former Sox star did that again.  Good to see Bobby's maturity level hasn't been affected by his recent pitching woes.  (No comments please about being too hard on the Sox; we know Jenks was joking.)  Frankly, Ozzie wasn't taking much of a risk in using Jenks last night.  Teams holding a three run lead in the ninth inning win 97% of the time according to The Book, an interesting analysis of baseball by some of the leading stat geeks around.  Even Randy Williams was likely to earn the save in that situation.

By winning last night, the Sox moved to 7.0 games behind the Twins -- a loss would have left them 9.0 back.  The Good Guys have one more game in the Great White North, where it was 45 degrees last night.  A bit of a difference from the pleasant 72 degrees inside the Metrodome.  By the way, despite the cold and the mediocre (sorry to have to use that adjective) opponent, the attendance was listed at 38,764.  That's at least two games worth of fans at the Cell.  Come on folks, get out and support the team when they come back home on May 19 to play the Angels.  Go Sox!