Tony Batista Topic Page

The Twins roster is set for opening day, so it's time to give a player by player rundown of the team. 25 players is a lot, so I'll start with the hitters in this entry.

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.

On a rare night of great pitching, the Twins still couldn't come up with a win. Last weekend I was starting to think the Twins might have turned a corner, but they now find themselves in another 4 game slide and it's becoming crystal clear that this team simply can't contend with Chicago and Detroit. In one week two fifths of our rotation has changed and 1/3 of our lineup should change as well.

Through the first 4 1/2 innings of Saturday night's game Brad Radke worked the Twins into a 0-4 deficit and the bats remained largely silent against Javier Vasquez. Radke pitched a quick 1st inning but allowed 1 run in each the 2nd and 3rd innings. Radke gave up 2 more runs in the 5th making the expected outcome of the game look pretty bleak.

The Twins won their second straight series and 2nd game in a row with a Wednesday afternoon victory in Texas. Kyle Lohse, at risk of losing his spot in the rotation, desperately needed a good start today. He wasn't spectacular, but was able to avoid damage. He gave up 1 run in 6 innings and picked up his second win of the season. He gave up 6 hits and walked 4 batters in the game.

The Twins took another loss and fell below .500 in their opening game against the Angels. Once again, Ron Gardenhire seemed to let his starter go a little longer than he should've. Carlos Silva gave up 2 runs in the 4th, 3 runs in the 5th and then managed to pitch 3 scoreless innings. He was brought out in the 9th inning and gave up 3 more runs. Silva and Gardenhire were both ejected from the game when Gardenhire went out to pull Silva from the game. Silva started things off by yelling at the home plate umpire, Jerry Meals, and after Silva was tossed, Gardenhire got in the face of Meals. This was Gardenhire's first heated argument with of the season and his first ejection of the year. Jesse Crain came on to finish the 9th.

The Athletics came into the dome riding the momentum of series victories over the Yankees and Mariners, but the 4-run lead they established early in the game wasn't enough to hold off the Twins. In front of a sell-out home opener crowd, the Twins recorded their second victory of the season.

The Twins dropped the series after losing the 3rd game to the Blue Jays by a score of 6 to 3. Mauer, Kubel and Castro had the day off in preparation for tomorrow's day game in Cleveland (and also because of a LHP tonight).

Twins Win! Only Tony Batista could be stopped tonight. The first few days of this season have seen a lot of high scoring games, so clearly a lot of pitchers haven't worked off their rust yet. However, it was still nice to see the Twins put some runs up on the board. It provides a glimmer of hope that maybe this offense is improved over last season. In all of 2005 the most runs the Twins scored in a single game was 12. We've already surpassed that with 13 tonight!

Spring training is, for the most part, wrapped up and just about every position on the team has been decided. That means it's time to introduce the 2006 Twins, at least as they will be on Tuesday, April 4th.