Francisco Liriano is becoming one of the pitchers that the Twins can rely on to right the ship when things aren’t going well. Wednesday night he had a no-hitter through five innings before Orlando Cabrera reached base on a missed call at first base to break up the no-hitter. Liriano’s pitch count was high, so he wouldn’t have been able to go more than 6 innings anyway. As good as Liriano was, he’s still having some control issues. He walked four batters and had a wild pitch. Now that he’s capable of comfortably pitching 100+ pitches it’d be nice if he can become more efficient with his pitch count so he can start to go 7 and 8 innings.

The great thing about Liriano and Santana is that they’re capable of getting a strikeout when they need it. Liriano showed that in the 6th inning when he had runners on 2nd and 3rd with 1 out. He struck out Garret Anderson and then got a deep fly ball from Vlad Guerrero to end the inning with no damage.

Game Notes

• The Twins scored early again with 3 runs in the first inning thanks to a Joe Mauer 2-run double. Mauer was 3-5 in the DH role and raised his average to .359. Alex Rios of Toronto was 3-4 Wednesday which puts him slightly ahead of Mauer for the MLB lead in average.
• Jason Kubel is starting to get comfortable at the plate. After homering Tuesday night, Kubel was 2-4 Wednesday night. Everyone in the Twins lineup picked up a hit in the game for a total of 14 hits and 7 runs.
• The Twins defense has been noticeably worse all season long, but that sloppiness is starting to show up in the error count. The Twins had 2 more errors tonight, one of which allowed the Angels only run to score.
• The Twins added 3 runs in the ninth inning to take away yet another save opportunity from poor Joe Nathan. Nathan pitched the ninth anyway and proceeded to strike all 3 batters he faced. Maybe we should convert Nathan to a starter since we don’t need a closer anyway. That’s a joke.

Looking Ahead

The late games will continue as the Twins head to Oakland for a 4-game series beginning Thursday.

Site Note

Originally I had planned to have game recaps in their own separate section and then I found they weren’t being noticed so I began displaying the latest game recap above other entries on the home page. I then began to realize that a large majority of the content was in the game recaps, so I’ve decided to mesh them in with regular entries. They still have some unique features to them such as the subtitle that displays the score. I plan to add more stuff to the game recap entries soon.

I’ve also decided to scrap the linescores that I’ve been using at the top of game recaps the past couple weeks. Line scores can be found anywhere, so I think they were just adding clutter.