R.A. Dickey Topic Page

On Friday night Francisco Liriano bounced back with a pretty good start against Seattle. He held them to 1 run through 6 innings. He still threw a lot of pitches and walked 4 batters, but he managed to avoid the disastrous innings that had plagued him recently.

The game headed into extra innings and after the Mariners accurately predicted Ron Gardenhire's squeeze attempt and pitched out trapping Joe Mauer between 3rd and home, Matt Tolbert managed to hit a fly ball to deep left field. The ball was misplayed by Wladimir Balentien for an error and it allowed the Twins to win 2-1.

If there were a way to put a positive spin on a 4-game sweep, I'd probably mention that 3 of the 4 games were lost by just 1 run and the other one was lost by 2 runs in walk-off fashion. Considering they're outspent by the Yankees $201 million to $65 million, the Twins put up a better fight than one would logically expect. It's fun to dream about how good just an extra $25 million well spent would make the Twins.

Monday's game seemed finished almost as soon as it got started. Although the Twins put a couple runs up right away in the first, Glen Perkins allowed 6 runs to the Yankees in the bottom of that inning before leaving with just 2 outs. R.A. Dickey did a marvelous job keeping the Yankees bats at bay as the Twins slowly pecked away at that lead. Dickey pitched 4 1/3 scoreless innings.

Everything began to unravel with 2 outs in the 2nd inning. Nick Blackburn walked the #8 hitter, Gerald Laird, and the Tigers then went on to get 4 hits, with an Alexi Casilla error wedged in between. After 2 innings the Twins already faced a 6 run deficit.

Blackburn stuck around until the 4th inning when he was tagged for 3 more runs and relieved by R.A. Dickey.

The Twins offense never scored a run. In fact, they had just 5 hits and were unable to take advantage of the 5 walks they were given. Their biggest threat came in the seventh when they loaded the bases with 2-outs, but that ended in a Michael Cuddyer feilder's choice.

Anticipoinment has to be the official word of the Twins-Royals weekend series. The series brought much anticipation for the return of Joe Mauer, and let me be clear, Mauer had nothing to with the latter half of the portmanteau. In his first at-bat on Friday night, he took 2 pitches for balls before hitting an opposite field solo home run. Mauer also had a double and a walk, and with the help of a 3 RBI night from Justin Morneau the Twins won the first game of the series, and all was right in the world again.

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.

The Twins struggled through the first week of the season on their way to a 3-4 start. All four losses came in games in which the Twins offense put up 0 or 1 runs, so clearly the offense needs to step things up and show a bit more consistency.

Carlos Gomez, Michael Cuddyer and Joe Crede each averaged more than a strikeout per game, with the team totaling 50 on the week-- about a 20% increase over their strikeout rate from 2008.

The Twins have said that Scott Baker will be activated in time to start Wednesday's home game against the Toronto Blue Jays. Obviously R.A. Dickey will be knocked out of his spot in the rotation, but that doesn't necessarily mean he'll be sent packing.

After failing to score a run on Thursday afternoon, the Twins bats came alive on a cold Friday evening in Chicago. Neither starter was great. R.A. Dickey and Jose Contreras lasted just five innings, but Dickey was just a little bit less hittable and was credited with the win. The Twins' record improved to 3-2, enough for first place in the division.

The Twins scattered single runs through 4 of the first 5 innings as Chicago tried to keep pace. Things got out of hand for the Sox in the seventh inning when the Twins posted 7 runs, more than they had scored in any of the previous 4 games. Justin Morneau led off the inning with his second home run of the season. Jason Kubel, Michael Cuddyer and Joe Crede were all then walked. Singles by Jose Morales, Nick Punto, Denard Span and Alexi Casilla helped provide the scoring, and then Justin Morneau added his second RBI of the inning with a sac fly.

Scott Baker just pitched 5 strong innings against AAA competition yesterday, so it comes as a surprise that Joe Christensen is reporting that Baker will start the season on the 15-day DL with shoulder soreness.

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