Alex Rios Topic Page

Week 9 comprised of the first 7 games of a 10 game road trip out West for the Twins. The week, as a whole, can best be described as underachieving. Ron Gardenhire himself had the following to say in his Sunday morning interview with Sid Hartman:

Boof was hurt by the 3 homeruns he gave up in the game, but overall he pitched pretty well. He gave up just 2 other hits and didn't walk any batters. Zito, however, shut down the Twins offense, allowing just 4 hits and no walks.

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.

Scott Baker struggled again on Tuesday night and now stands to possibly become the third pitcher exiled from the Twins rotation this season. The most likely replacement would be Carlos Silva, who was moved out of the rotation a couple weeks ago to work on his stuff. That doesn't exactly give me a lot of confidence, but what other options would we have?

The Twins couldn't muster the offense needed against Roy Halladay and B.J. Ryan in the season opener. Santana clearly wasn't in midseason form as he seemed to hit a wall in the 6th inning. The Twins hit two homeruns (Batista and Stewart) but couldn't get enough baserunners to put runs on the board.