A.J. Pierzynski Topic Page

Finally, we reach the final of the pitchers for the 2008 projectsions—Joe Nathan. It should come as no surprise that he's projected to be great again in 2008.

This is part 1 of a series of pieces over the next couple weeks that will take a position-by-position look at the Twins over the past five seasons. You'll see how the team has changed, where they went right and where they went wrong in personnel decisions.

The big story of Monday's series opener against the White Sox was the sixth inning incident at first base in which it appeared A.J. Pierzynski purposely stepped on Justin Morneau's foot while crossing first after hitting into an inning-ending double play. It was the second time of the day A.J. had come suspiciously close to Morneau's foot and it sent manager Ron Gardenhire into a tirade against first base umpire Greg Gibson.

The Twins and White Sox had their first meeting in early April shortened to two games because the White Sox bullpen was tired of cold weather. The two teams ended up splitting the low scoring series. Both teams have lost five of their last seven, but the White Sox have just ended a five game losing streak with 2 wins over the LA Angels. They sit next to each other in the standings, each a growing distance (now about 4 games) from the hot Cleveland Indians and Detroit Tigers.

The series has been cut short due to cold weather and wind on Friday, but it appears that the next two games will go on as scheduled. Sidney Ponson will be shuffled to Monday leaving Carlos Silva to get the start on Saturday afternoon and Johan Santana to pitch on Sunday. The White Sox will stick with their original rotation plan by having Javier Vasquez pushed back to Saturday and left handed rookie John Danks face off against Santana on Sunday.

The Twins were pretty flight all-around on Saturday. Sloppy defensive play is being blamed for the 4-1 loss, and there's definitely some validity to that clame, however, the offense also only scored 1 run. It's tough to win games with 1 run scored.

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 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.