Jose Mijares Topic Page

Less than 24 hours after a spectacular tie-breaker victory against Detroit the Twins have to fly to New York to take on the Yankees, the best team in baseball.

With no other options, they'll send rookie Brian Duensing to the mound for the opening game today. Duensing, of course, was scratched from Sunday's start by Ron Gardenhire, who instead opted to go with Carl Pavano on short rest. Duensing will have to face the 2007 Cy Young winner and 2009 Cy Young Candidate C.C. Sabathia.

The Twins surrendered a 10 run lead largely thanks to a poor start by Nick Blackburn and an even worse showcase by Brian Duensing, Bobby Keppel and Jose Mijares. This has to be the lowest point of the season so far.

Just about everything went right for the Twins on Tuesday night against the Oakland Athletics...until the 9th inning. The Twins scored 10 runs and Scott Baker had allowed just 2 hits and 0 walks through 8 innings. He came back out for the 9th inning, and things fell apart.

Baker loaded the bases with 2 hits and a walk with no outs. Jesse Crain was called upon to relieve him. Crain allowed a hit and a walk, then an Alexi Casilla error allowed another run to score. Crain wasn't able to retire a batter before Jose Mijares had to be called upon. Mijares struck out Jason Giambi, but then walked the next two batters.

The Twins nearly took full advantage of the Los Angeles Angels' sweeping of the Royals this weekend, but a late inning bullpen collapse cost them a sweep of their own.

Nick Blackburn bounced back on Sunday from a horrendous May 5th start by pitching 7 shutout innings against the Seattle Mariners.

Joe Nathan blew his first save of the season by giving up a leadoff home run to Ben Zobrist in the ninth inning. Gleeman suggested that perhaps Nathan isn't getting enough work. It's hard to disagree. Nathan has pitched just 7.0 innings all season. The only player that's been on the active roster all season and pitched fewer innings is Craig Breslow. Nathan is the highest paid member of the bullpen, and should be used more often.

Although Francisco Liriano couldn't get his first save of the season, he had his best outing of the season, allowing 2 runs through 6.2 innings.

Scott Baker will try to bounce back from his rough debut last Wednesday where he surrendered 6 runs in 4 innings against the Toronto Blue Jays. Pitching for the Red Sox will be knuckleballer Tim Wakefield who is coming off a complete game, 2 run effort against Oakland. Wakefield can be somewhat of a coin toss; his success largely depends on how his knuckleball is working. Last season he allowed 5 or more runs in 7 appearances, however still ended the season with a respectable 4.13 ERA. He's had 2 pretty good starts, so hopefully the Twins have found him on one of his down days.

Twins Insider today reported that Jesse Crain has been placed on the 15-day DL.

The Twins have now lost 6 of their last 8 games and find themselves as the most outscored team in baseball with a -29 run differential. Problems exist in all facets of the game for the Twins--inconsistent offense, poor starting pitching and atrocious bullpen work so far.

ERA's rise and fall quickly in April, but at this point the team ERA is 5.19 with Glen Perkins, Jesse Crain and Joe Nathan being the only guys under 5. Thursday night's seventh inning implosion in which Craig Breslow and R.A. Dickey failed to record an out through 5 batters was particularly ugly.

Ron Gardenhire brought the team a little bit closer to its opening day Roster this morning by naming Jose Morales the opening day backup catcher to Mike Redmond. Drew Butera, thought to be the favorite for the job because of his defensive superiority, was cut from camp.

On the pitching side, Jose Mijares, was cut from camp. The move was expected after Mijares showed up to camp overweight and didn't perform well this spring. The Twins' bullpen is a major question mark this season, so it's almost a sure bet that he'll be in the majors by mid-season.

The Twins have just a handful of players to cut prior to heading north for the start of the season (one week from tomorrow), so there's a pretty clear picture of what the roster will look like when the Twins host Seattle on April 6th.

The currrent roster is as follows:

Pitchers