MVN - Most Valuable Network

Liriano was good enough in victory

On Sunday afternoon, all eyes were on Francisco Liriano. Liriano is viewed as a guy who can propel the Twins to the playoffs, which is why he is going to be under the microscope when he starts.

In his first start since being recalled from Rochester, Liriano was good enough to get a victory. The Twins defeated the Indians, 6-2, to win the series at the Metrodome.

With a White Sox loss and a Twins victory, the Twins are in first place. Of course, this is a footnote because it’s was Liriano’s day.

Liriano had a beautiful day on the mound. He threw a shutout for six innings. He gave up three hits and three walks, and struck out five. His pitches were around 90 mph often.

The impressive part of his outing was how he got out of jams couple of times, which was the key to this game.

In the third inning, he got into a bases loaded jam, which came after a throwing error by Brendan Harris. Liriano hunkered down by striking out Ben Francisco to keep the Twins’ lead at 1-0.

In the fifth inning, Liriano had runners at second and third. Francisco had a chance to make amends for striking out in the third, but it did not happen as Liriano was able to get him to ground out to end the threat.

A sign of a good pitcher is when he has the confidence that he will get out of jams, which is exactly what Liriano did.

Liriano started the game off well. He worked quickly in the first two innings. He used his slider well early and often to get his outs. In the first inning, he struck out Grady Sizemore and Francisco.

He was on a high as far as adraeline goes to start the game. Unfortunately, he went through a bump on the road in the middle innings, which was also expected.

Until he gets in the rhythm of pitching against major league hitters, he will go through ups and downs like today.

It’s hard to complain about the job he did in this contest. So he wasn’t vintage Liriano of 2006, but this was good enough. It’s hard to believe that he is going to match what he did in 2006. If his starts are as efficient like this game, everyone should be happy.

Liriano propelled the 2006 Twins to a season to remember, and he got the Twins in first place finally on Sunday.

The Twins can only hope he can gave the Twins another magic ride for the rest of the season.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 3rd, 2008 at 11:53 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.