July 2006 Archives

Much to my surprise, Carlos Silva put together a good start on Monday agains the Texas Rangers. It was one of those nights where he could've given up 6 or 7 runs thanks to 15 runs in the first 6 innings by Minnesota's offense. It's good to see Silva put together a decent start. The Twins need to shore up the bottom half of the rotation if they have any chance of finding themselves in the playoffs this fall.

You have to wonder if Wayne Krivsky, GM of the Reds is still secretly working for the Twins. I'm not sure what big moves he was involved in when he was with the Twins, but he's definitely done some good work for the Twins since leaving this past offseason.

Sunday's game was a tough one to watch. I can't remember a time in recent history when Johan appeared to be laboring so much for an entire outing. He gave up 9 hits and 4 walks in 5 1/3 innings, but amazingly still only gave up 3 runs. The month of July has not been a good one for Johan, by his standards anyway. He has a 3-1 record, but it's his 4.74 ERA that's unusual. I'm not worried though.

The Twins dug themselves a six run hole on Saturday night and they nearly worked themselves out of it, but Detroit added a couple late insurance runs to hold on to the lead. Brad Radke pitched only 3 innings and he ran into trouble in all of them. He gave up 7 hits and 4 runs before Kyle Lohse came in for the fourth. Lohse quickly gave up a two-run homer in the fourth to put the Twins down by 6. He did, however, come back with 2 scoreless innings.

In a way Friday night's series opener against Detroit was encouraging in that the Twins put up a good 10 inning fight against baseball's best team. However, it was also disappointing in that Francisco Liriano put together another masterpiece but the offense couldn't score more than 2 runs off rookie Zach Miner who was coming off two straight rough outings.

On May 21st the Detroit Tigers went ahead of the Chicago White Sox for the AL Central lead. That set up the White Sox as the wildcard leader, a position that they remained in all season—until last night. Yes, after over two months there's a new wildcard leader in the AL. It's not the Twins, yet. The Twins completed the sweep of the White Sox allowing the Yankees to go 1/2 game ahead of both the White Sox and Twins.

Where would the Twins be in this series without their abundance of homeruns? 10 of the 11 runs scored in the last two games are from the five homeruns they’ve hit. While Chicago has matched the Twins in the number of homeruns, the Twins’ homers have been more damaging in terms of runs. Jason Bartlett and his 3-run homer were the difference in Tuesday night’s game.

The Twins got off to a slow start on Monday night in Chicago. Despite having baserunners in scoring position in the 3rd and 4th innings, Javier Vasquez managed to hold the Twins scoreless through five innings. In the meantime Brad Radke had given up a homerun in each of the 4th and 5th innings. However, they were both solo homers, so the damage was minimal. The Twins matched the White Sox in power on Monday night; the difference was the Twins had more baserunners on when the balls left the park.

Liriano got off to an incredible start on Sunday in Cleveland. Through 4 innings he had struck out 9 batters and had a 3-0 lead. He looked unstoppable. However, he ran into some trouble in the fifth and allowed 1 run to score and threw a lot of pitches while working out of the inning. The Twins went to the bullpen in the sixth.

A month ago Jeremy Sowers wasn't even in the big leagues. Since being called up and making his debut start on June 25th he's also been less than spectacular. He came into Saturday night's game with an error of 5.56 and a 1-3 record. He was also just coming off a bad start against the Twins earlier in the week. He was a different pitcher on Saturday night. He allowed just 4 hits and a walk in the complete game shutout and he got plenty of run support.

The series opener in Cleveland was a game dominated by offense and it clocked it at 3 hours and 43 minutes in length. The Twins scored 14 runs on 18 hits and 6 walks and were also helped out by a fourth inning Aaron Boone error that allowed the Twins to compile 8 runs in the one inning alone. The Twins picked a good night to put up some offense, because Carlos Silva wasn't very good.

After a mini-slump surrounding the All-Star break in which the Twins lost 5 of 6, the Twins have gotten back into the form they exhibited in June. They've won 6 games in a row and even Rondell White is contributing. White tripled his season homerun total with 2 longballs on Wednesdays night. He also had a double in the game to round out a 3-4 night at the plate with 3 RBI. Rondell's offensive resurgence couldn't have come at a better time. With the injuries to Lew Ford, Shannon Stewart and Torii Hunter the Twins needed other guys to step up. Jason Tyner did it in his first few games, and now White has started to show signs of life.

If not for Terry Tiffee's error in the top of the ninth, Francisco Liriano would've had his first career complete game shutout. Tiffee pinch hit in the eighth for Justin Morneau and then took over at first in the field in the ninth. A routine grounder thrown to first dropped out of Tiffee's glove to allow the leadoff runner to reach. After getting two outs Liriano gave up a single which allowed the first and only Tampa Bay run of the game to score. Ron Gardenhire opted to have Kyle Lohse come in to get the final out of the game.

Scott Baker wasn't perfect in his return from Rochester, but he pitched just well enough to pick up the win. Baker gave up 3 runs through 6 innings—good enough for a quality start. The Twins' bullpen was perfect to finish out the game. Pat Neshek, Juan Rincon and Joe Nathan each pitched 1-2-3 innings in order. The victory moved the Twins within 6 games of the wildcard, but they still have two other teams wedged between them and the White Sox—Toronto and New York.

The Twins got news that Torii Hunter would be the third Twin added to the DL in the past few days. An MRI found that Hunter had a fracture in his foot. Rondell White rejoined the roster today to replace Shannon Stewart and Nick Punto again found himself in the unfamiliar territory of center field on Sunday. Carlos Silva put together a fair start and the Twins managed to take the series 3 game to 1. The victory was most impressive considering the Twins did it with a team that resembled their AAA affiliate Rochester Redwings. On April 4th the following players were in AAA:

With Johan Santana on the mound the Twins led the entire game, but the victory came at a cost. Shannon Stewart and Torii Hunter left the game with foot injuries leaving an already thin outfield in even worse shape. Nick Punto finished the game in center field. Stewart has already been placed on the DL.

Jason Tyner joined the Twins on Friday night from AAA Rochester after Lew Ford was placed on the DL with a strained oblique muscle. The 29 year old Tyner didn't waste any time in making a positive impact. On a night of stranded baserunners, Tyner provided two RBI singles—one of which was a walk-off hit in the 10th.

Liriano had his worst start of the season on Thursday night which ultimately led to a 4-6 loss in the series opener to Cleveland. The Twins have now lost two straight games in which Santana or Liriano started. Some of made the excuse that he struggled do to all the travel in the past few days. That's possible, but it's also possible that he just didn't have a good start. All pitchers struggle from time to time, especially 22 year olds.

The second half of the baseball season is about to begin and the trade deadline is inching closer and closer. With no baseball on Thursday to talk about, now is a good time look ahead at the keys to the second half for the Twins. In early June it looked as if the primary goal of the second half would be planning for 2007. After a hot month of June that's being called into question and it will leave GM Terry Ryan with some tough choices to make.

It looked like the NL was going to end it's nine game All-star win streak as Trevor Hoffman, one of the most prolific closers of all time, came on for the ninth inning. The game had been a 2-1 pitchers duel up to that poing. With 2 outs the AL pulled out a single and two doubles to take a 3-2 lead and Mariano Rivera held that lead in the bottom of the inning.

Much to my surprise, Carlos Silva put together a good start on Monday agains the Texas Rangers. It was one of those nights where he could've given up 6 or 7 runs thanks to 15 runs in the first 6 innings by Minnesota's offense. It's good to see Silva put together a decent start. The Twins need to shore up the bottom half of the rotation if they have any chance of finding themselves in the playoffs this fall.

Jose Contreras has declared himself unable to play in the All-Star game after throwing 117 pitches and getting hit in the elbow on Sunday. This has created room for Francisco Liriano, and at 22 years old Liriano will attend his first All-Star game. A lot of credit should be given to Contreras for opting out and allowing Liriano to get a chance. Tom Glavine did the same thing for the NL and allowed Chris Capuano of the Brewers to make the team.

Johan Santana started out Sunday's game on a tear—striking out 5 of the first 6 batters he faced. Texas tagged him for 2-run homers in the 6th and 7th innings, and the offense couldn't overcome the deficit. The Twins could muster only 2 runs off Texas lefty John Koronka as they failed to take advantage of run scoring opportunities. The Ranger bullpen shut down the offense—allowing just 3 hits and no runs through 4 innings.

There are two guys the Twins can count on to pull out a win in almost any circumstance—Johan Santana and Francisco Liriano. After losing three straight the Twins had those two going back-to-back to finish the first half of the season. Liriano did just as expected—he shut down the Rangers and led the Twins to a 4-0 victory. He improved his MLB best ERA to 1.83 and his 8 strikeouts brought his season total to 102 in just 88 1/3 IP.

Carlos Silva threw batting practice to a pretty good Texas lineup for the first 1 2/3 innings of Friday night's series opener. It was actually pretty incredible that he only allowed two runs in the first inning; he left two runners in scoring position in the innings. Silva had three more runs charged to him in the 2nd inning, and left with a strained right knee. Whether it was an injury or an "injury" isn't much of a concern for me. As long as it keeps him off the mound for a while, I'll be satisfied. There were some grumbles earlier this week over Kyle Lohse being the likely candidate to take Boof Bonser's spot in the rotation instead of Bakers. Sooner or later they might both be there.

Update: The voting is over and Liriano came up just a little short. A.J. Pierzynski will be joining the rest of his team in the July 11th White Sox vs. National League game.

The Twins of the last two nights have looked a lot like the Twins of April and May. Instead of getting timely hitting they're grounding into a double play at every sign of a rally. The Twins tied the game at 3 on a Joe Mauer single in the 5th. Cuddyer followed up with a single, but with 2 outs the Twins weren't able to add any runs. A 3-run inning from the Royals in the 7th put the Twins behind and double play balls in the 8th and 9th killed any hopes of rallies.

Apologies for being a couple days late on the player of the week. The holiday weekend put me a little behind schedule. This covers Monday, June 26th through Sunday, July 2nd. The week was, of course, a good one for the Twins. They went 6-0 and outscored their opponents, the Dodgers and Brewers, by a total of 49-16. All-Star selections were also announced Sunday evening and we discovered that Joe Mauer and Johan Santana had made it with the chance for Francisco Liriano to be added with the final vote.

The eleven game winning streak came to an end Tuesday night in Kansas City. Boof Bonser struggled with his command and gave up 4 runs in the third inning before being replaced in the fourth by Kyle Lohse. Lew Ford's 2-run homer provided the only runs for the Twins as just about every rally the Twins got started was killed by a double play. The Twins hit into three double plays in the loss.

Most people expected the Twins to win this game, but the win came in an unexpected way. Johan Santana gave up 5 runs and the Twins found themselves down 5-3 going into the eighth. The game started off well with Justin Morneau hitting a 2-run homerun in the second and Joe Mauer hitting a solo shot in the sixth.

The Twins extended their season long win streak to 10 games with a Sunday victory over the Brewers. The win also completed the Twins third straight sweep. Francisco Liriano got off to a less than perfect start. He hit Rickie Weeks with a pitch and gave up a single to Jeff Cirillo. While pitching to Corey Hart, he caught a spike in the mound and tripped before delivering a pitch. The balk moved runners to second and third with no outs. Two strikeouts and a groundout got him out of the jam with no runs given up. Liriano was near perfect for the rest of the game—giving up just 3 hits and a walk through 8 shutout innings. Liriano also recorded a career high 12 strikeouts.

Milwaukee starter Chris Capuano had been able to shut down Twins' offenses in the past, but on Saturday night the bats managed 6 runs over 4 innings off Capuano. Normally, those runs would've been enough, but Silva struggled through 4 1/3 innings while giving up 7 runs (5 ER). It took the eighth inning collapse of Brewer closer Derrick Turnbow to give the Twins their 9th straight victory.