Francisco Liriano Topic Page

The Twins snapped their 2-game skid with a convincing win that was broken open with a 5-run seventh inning for the Twins. Edwin Jackson and Francisco Liriano had been dueled to a 1-1 tie in the preceding six innings.

Liriano put together his best start of the season, allowing 2 runs on just 4 hits and 3 walks. More importantly, he struck out a season high 9 batters, which is tied for the most since his dominate stint in 2006. In terms of innings pitched, it was also his most successful effort of the year. After witnessing Scott Baker's sudden collapse on Sunday afternoon, Ron Gardenhire wasted no time pullling Liriano when he ran into trouble in the eighth inning (the pitch count of 103 had a lot to do with it too).

In the season opener Francisco Liriano pitched 7 innings of walk-free baseball. Although he allowed a couple home runs, I thought it was a decent outing. Saturday's game was a different story. Liriano allowed 4 walks, and his inability to find the strike zone was most evident in the fifth inning when Liriano walked in 2 runs for the Sox.

In my mind, the best argument for an improved Twins club in 2009 is the potential to have Francisco Liriano on the mound for more than the 76 innings he provided last season. Replace the nearly 140 innings that Livan Hernandez pitched last season with Liriano's arm, and that makes a huge difference.

This is a continuation of the 2008 player projections series. We're currently working through the pitchers and today we find ourselves looking at Francisco Liriano who is working his way back onto the Twins roster after missing all of 2007 rehabbing from Tommy John surgery.

There's some bad news in Twins nation and it isn't that the Twins lost 9-0 to the Rangers on Tuesday night. The Twins website reported that Francisco Liriano will skip his next start with pain in his throwing elbow. They're downplaying it as a precautionary measure, but I can't help but be a little worried. Boof Bonser is being recalled to make the start on Wednesday, and I'm willing to bet his second go-around in the majors won't be much better than his first.

In a way Friday night's series opener against Detroit was encouraging in that the Twins put up a good 10 inning fight against baseball's best team. However, it was also disappointing in that Francisco Liriano put together another masterpiece but the offense couldn't score more than 2 runs off rookie Zach Miner who was coming off two straight rough outings.

There are two guys the Twins can count on to pull out a win in almost any circumstance—Johan Santana and Francisco Liriano. After losing three straight the Twins had those two going back-to-back to finish the first half of the season. Liriano did just as expected—he shut down the Rangers and led the Twins to a 4-0 victory. He improved his MLB best ERA to 1.83 and his 8 strikeouts brought his season total to 102 in just 88 1/3 IP.

Francisco Liriano had his best start of the season as he pitched 7 shutout innings and allowed just 1 hit and 2 walks. Liriano struck out 6 Oriole batters and more importantly went deeper into the game than he has all season. Liriano's performance set up the perfect pitching situation for the Twins with Rincon coming in for a solid 8th inning and Nathan finishing up the game in the ninth. Overall the Orioles were held to just 3 hits and 3 walks.

Francisco Liriano got his first start of the season for the Twins Friday night, and he met expectations with a nice five inning outing as he works to build up his endurance. Liriano wasn't given a whole lot of breathing room, but the Twins offense scored just enough runs just in time for Liriano's departure after 5 innings.

I wasn't so sure Gardy would do it, but alas he made the only sane decision possible: he's pulling Silva out of the rotation in favor of Francisco Liriano.