Boof Bonser Topic Page

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.

Today we round out what I think will be the starting rotation to begin the season for the Minnesota Twins as I continue the 2008 projections series of posts. We've gone through Scott Baker, Francisco Liriano, Livan Hernandez and Boof Bonser. That leaves Kevin Slowey to round out the starters.

Boof Bonser is next on our list as we continue our series of 2008 player projections. We're working our way through the pitching staff and should get to the hitters next week. As usual, let's start with the numbers:

Saturday afternoon's game got off to an ugly start. Boof Bonser loaded the bases with a leadoff single by David DeJesus, a bunt single from Mark Grudzielanek and an infield single from Mike Sweeney. Bonser struck out Mark Teahan and Ross Gload for the first two outs of the inning, but then Luis Rodriguez, who was playing second had a pop fly bounce off his glove in shallow center field to allow 2 runs to score. Bonser then struck out Alex Gordon to end the inning.

The Twins have lost two straight games to a team they should beat. There's still a month left in the season, but if the race comes down to the final days of the season, they might be able to look back at two games that slipped away, despite pretty good pitching performances from Matt Garza and Boof Bonser. For a while it looked like Wednesday was going to shape up to be a good day for the Twins. Detroit was losing its second game in New York, the White Sox were losing, and the Twins were leading the Royals 2-0. That all changed abruptly.

The Twins won the opening game of the series on Monday night by a score of 15-2 yet they still managed to get outscored in the series by a score of 21-17 as they dropped Tuesday's game 9-0 and then lost on Wednesday afternoon by a score of 10-2. Boof Bonser showed us again that he's not ready (and may never be) for the major leagues. Sure, he didn't get much help from his defense as Justin Morneau and Nick Punto each made errors in the ugly fourth inning, but Bonser still gave up 6 hits and 2 walks in 4 innings.

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.

The Twins pulled off a Saturday night victory against the Cubs in the game I thought the cubs had the best chance of winning in this series. In front of a crowd of over 42,000, half of which was made up of Cub fans, Boof Bonser was able to pitch shutout ball for 6 1/3 innings. Reyes and Rincon also held the Cubs scoreless in relief and Joe Nathan picked up his 12th save with a scoreless ninth.

The Twins bats roughed up Jamie Moyer to help Boof Bonser to his first career big league victory. Bonser wasn't exactly perfect, but he did well enough and worked out of some jams (specifically in the first with bases loaded and no outs).

Sunday's game was a tough loss for the Twins who got an excellent start from Boof Bonser in his major league debut. Boof started out the game on a rough note by loading up the bases with no outs. He then got a sac fly out which scored the first run of the game for Milwaukee. Bonser kept the damage to a minimum by getting the next two batters by way of a fly ball and a strikeout.