April 2008 Archives

The big news of the week was Francisco Liriano's demotion to AAA Rochester, which came as no surprise after his 3rd start of the season lasted just 2/3rds of an inning. However, the biggest problem for this team this year (and all of last year) was it's offense.

Boof Bonser put together another start worthy of a win, but his offense again failed to provide decent run support. The offense was shut out by Chad Guadin in a close 3-0 game. In Boof's 5 starts this season he's been given a total of 7 runs by his offense. Over that span he's really had only 1 bad start.

Three low scoring affairs ended in a series victory for the Twins against Central division rival Cleveland Indians. On Friday night the Twins were shut out while Francisco Liriano struggled again in his second start of the season. Liriano allowed "only" 3 runs through 5 complete innings, but it could've been worse. He gave up 4 hits, walked 5 and struck out just 3. Rick Anderson and Ron Gardenhire have raved about his last two bullpen sessions, but when he goes out and struggles to find his location for 5 innings, it's hard to fully believe what they see.

It looked the Twins might have been on the verge of giving up another lead when Livan Hernandez allowed 2 runs in the sixth, tying the ball game. Livan allowed 5 runs (3 earned) through six innings for his worst start of the season. However, unlike the previous two nights, the bullpen was able to get the job done. Dennys Reyes, Juan Rincon and Joe Nathan put together 3 scoreless innings and the Twins were able to add one run in the eighth inning on a Mike Lamb sacrifice fly for the win.

For the second straight night the bullpen gave up a late Twins' lead. Three runs in the eighth inning were enough to put Detroit on top and hold off a small ninth inning rally from the Twins. The Tigers swept the 2 game series and doubled their win total on the season. At 4-10, they're not just 2 games behind the 6-8 Twins.

The Twins seemed on their way to handing the Tigers their 11th loss of the young season before the Tigers broke out for 11 runs in their final three innings at the plate to defeat the Twins by a score of 11-9.

First, Francisco Liriano has been recalled to pitch on Sunday against the Royals. Slowey has been placed on the 15-day DL, retroactive to April 4th. After Thursday's rainout, that comes as a surpise to me, but I suppose they would've had to make a move at some point by early next week.

As expected, tonight's game in Chicago has been rained out. It actually works in the Twins favor as it will buy them a little bit of time in deciding who will fill Kevin Slowey's spot in the rotation, if he can't be ready himself.

The temperature started out in the low 40s and by game's end it was into the 30s. The cold, however, didn't stop the Twins from having their best offensive game of the season. The Twins scored two runs early before expanding their lead with five runs in the third inning. A Carlos Gomez 2 run double capped off the inning that also included 5 singles and a walk.

With Kevin Slowey questionable for his next start and Francisco Liriano's cycle in the rotation aligning with Slowey's, there's been much speculation that Sunday could mark the return of Liriano.

I missed the day game and I'm in the process of watching the re-play on FSN. I'm currently in the process of watching the seventh inning, the one inning that doomed the Twins in this game. The highlight was a Joe Crede grand slam that gave the White Sox their first lead of the game.

A quality start from Boof Bonser wasn't enough to overcome the continued offensive struggles of the Twins. Through seven games their offense is averaging only 2.7 runs per game and they've been limited to 1 or less run in 3 games.

Justin Morneau's slump has possibly come to end. He hit his first home run of the season, a 3-run blast in the 4th inning, and later provided an RBI double. That gives him 3 hits and 5 RBI in the past two games.

The Twins played their 4th 1-run game of the young season, this time barely coming out on top against the Kansas City Royals. The loss was the first of the season for Kansas City, who had opened their season with a 3-game sweep of Detroit.

The Twins' first series of the season ended up in a 1 game to 3 loss to the Angels. The series involved 3 low-scoring 1-run games and the 9-1 blowout win by the Angels on Tuesday night.

In his first major league start, Nick Blackburn gave the Twins a pretty good effort. Unfortunately, 0 run support never results in a win. Blackburn allowed just 1 run on 5 hits through 7 innings. He matched the zeros of Angels pitcher Joe Saunders until the seventh inning when a 2-out wild pitch allowed Howie Kendrick to score from third.

Just about everything went right on opening day. In game two, just about nothing went right as the Twins fell to the Angels by a score of 9-1. Boof Bonser labored to get through six innings. It could've been worse—Boof left 3 runners stranded in scoring position.