Tag Archives: Francisco Liriano

2012 Twins Game Log

2012 Game 72: Stacker of Wheat at L’Etoile du Nord

183 Comments

First Pitch - 7:10 p.m. CDT
Television - FSN
Game Notes

When you search the internet for images, you get a lot different results with "white socks" than you do with "white sox". But you might want to set your search engine filters accordingly if you search on "white stockings".

If there's a better way to wrap up this round of interleague play than by taking on our most universally despised divisional rival, the Chicago White Sox, I don't know what it is. Oh, wait. Yes I do. Sweeping a series against said Sox would be better. Much better.

The Pale Hose are coming off a weekend that saw them move into first place in the division and acquire Kevin Youkilis from Boston for Brent Lillibridge, Zach Stewart and some cash. Youkilis is expected to be starting at third base tonight, where he will be frequently mistaken for Yukon Cornelius.

ON THE HILL
Francisco Liriano: 1-7, 5.74 ERA, 69 ERA+, 4.36 FIP, 4.18 xFIP, 0.5 WAR
Jake Peavy: 6-3, 2.74 ERA, 155 ERA+, 3.25 FIP, 4.07 xFIP, 2.5 WAR

Play ball!

2012 Twins Game Log

2012 Game 59: Cubs at Twins

53 Comments

The Twins go for their first three-game sweep of the season today, right?

Ryan Dempster, who's on pace to have the best year of his career (though he only has one win...the poor guy's offense won't help him) faces Francisco Liriano, who is not, but has come back strong. Not that any of us ever know which version of him to expect.

Winners of 9 of their last 11, the Twins are now 24-34, which is bad, but certainly doesn't put them at some embarrassing outlier. I can live with that for now.

2012 Twins Game Log

2012 Game 50: Return of the F Bomb

115 Comments

DAY GAME ALERT!

#Pitchers

A's: Tyson Ross (2-5 5.79) If I were an A's fan Ross's K picture would be his face on a bag of chicken.
Twins: Francisco Liriano (0-5 8.47 ERA) I'm afraid to look at advanced stats today. Maybe tomorrow.

I for one, welcome our new Dictator who, having fought his way out of the bullpen, has found himself the master of the high ground. Hold on to it for dear life Frankie. I'm also recommending everyone start Liriano in their respective fantasy leagues. Unless of course you are playing me.

DMitt caught last night. Who catches today? GO JOE. Doesn't there seem to be some sort of link between butters and Liriano? GO JOE! Butera might need to pitch, so ... GO JOE!!

The Dictator and Chairman are going to live large today.

#UPDATE:

tWINs lineup:

  1. Span 8
  2. Revere 9
  3. Mauer DH
  4. HAMMER 7
  5. MOUNTIE 3
  6. Oz 6
  7. Laddie 4
  8. Butters 2 (ugh.)
  9. Christmas Songs 5

#GO TWINS!

2012 Twins Game Log

2012 Game 28: Heavenly Host at Gemini

200 Comments

First Pitch - 7:10 PM CDT
Television - FSN
Game Notes
Lineups

Jeebus, did the guys at the MLB Genius Bar secretly realign divisions and put us back in the AL West? This makes three series against this stupid Angels team in just over a month. Know how many series we've had against division opponents in that time? One. So yeah, I'm sick and tired of Torii Hunter kicking our collective ass (stop throwing him breaking balls in the strike zone, already!) and having to counter real starting pitching with our currently constituted rotation. It's like charging the beaches of Normandy with a slingshot and a bag of marshmallows for ammo. Oh, and Pujols is starting to hit the ball again. So we have that to look forward to. On the bright side, our offense this year is better than Oakland's. But on the dark side, they are the only AL team with an offense worse than the Twins at the moment.

ON THE HILL

Jered Weaver (4-0, 1.61 ERA, 2.00 FIP, 2.88 xFIP) - Last time out this guy threw a no-hitter. He was one walk and one passed ball from a perfect game. To be fair, he was facing one of the worst hitting lineups since the '62 Mets, but you have to tip your hat anyway. Weaver is the first pitcher to throw a no-hitter, then face the same team in his next start since Derek Lowe did it in 2002.

Francisco Liriano (0-4, 9.97 ERA, 6.75 FIP, 5.44 xFIP, ) - This guy is yet another reminder that spring training hype has all the substance of a popcorn fart. By now everybody except Liriano knows what Liriano's problem is. If pitching smarts were chocolate density, the F-Bomb would be a Three Musketeers bar. Because consistently overthrowing sliders when you get behind in the count only gets you further behind in the count. Consistently.

Play ball!

2012 Twins Game Log

2012 Game Logs: Game 23 Twins @ LAaAAAAAAaAa

158 Comments

Franciso Lirano
v
Jerome Williams

Mrs. Buffalo is currently watching Cupcake Wars. How many different ways can you possibly make cupcakes? Let's take a look, I see 8 of them:

1:Trout- This dude only has 5 career home runs. That is only 1 more than Drew Butera. What a cupcake.
2:Callaspo -Career slugging percentage? .384 For a frame of reference, Tom Prince, in his two seasons with the Twins, had a .371 slugging percentage.
3:Pujols - A .265 OBP this season? You know who can beat that? Chris Heintz and his career mark of .268
4:Hunter- This guy is a bozo. I am not even going to bother looking at his numbers.
5:Trumbo- A career .294 OBP for the LAAA slugger. You know who can beat that, besides most people? How about Dave Engle with a career .316 mark.
6:Kendrick- The second baseman has a 87 OPS+ this season. This looks suspiciously like Tim Laudner's career mark of 84.
7:Wells- The only thing worse that Veron Wells this season? Vernon Wells last season. His numbers compare unfavorably to Pat Borders' season with the Twins.
8:Aybar- This season with the Angels Aybar has one stolen base. This is exactly as many as Jeff Reed had in his career with the Twins. Dude was a catcher. What a cupcake this Aybar is!
9:Iannetta- This guy is actually having a hell of a season.

LAAAAA is hitting like a bunch of back up catchers. What a joke.

2012 Twins Game Recaps, Minnesota Twins, MLB

Game 16 Recap: Minnesota 2, Tampa Bay 6

19 Comments

I had a full day planned so I recorded todays tilt on the old DVR. Maybe my technology has a heart because when I went to review the game this evening, it hadn’t been recorded after all. At first I was annoyed, but then I checked out the box score… yuck. After committing 3 errors in last night’s ballgame, the Twins cleaned it up today and didn’t commit a single one. That’s about the only positive thing I saw. Continue reading Game 16 Recap: Minnesota 2, Tampa Bay 6 →

2012 Twins Game Log

2012 Game Number 2: Minnesota Twins at Baltimore Orioles

224 Comments

New season, same result - 'meh' pitching, and 'too little, too late'  hitting.

I think Sean had it right last game log when he says that the front office knows what they've got, and they know that it's not happening this season. Fair enough, but I'm impatient - I want a World Series this year. Therefore, I've put together a little cheat sheet for how this team can be turned into a contender. If someone with connections could route this to the powers that be, I'd appreciate it.

Pitching

Obviously, the big problem is going to be pitching, so they must obviously trade for some strong starters, and some strong relievers. I've taken the liberty of drawing up some proposals.

  • DFA Jeff Gray (He's letting opposing batters reach at a ridiculous .667 clip. Thanks, but no thanks, Jeff.)
  • DFA Matt Capps (obviously)
  • Trade Brian Duensing for Roy Halladay (He's got an unsustainable rate of 27.0 k/9 going, so trade him while he's hot)
  • Arrange for Kyle Gibson to be fitted with a robotic arm (This whole recovery process is taking too long - time to speed things up a bit.)
  • Have some crazy, back-alley doctor remove all of Scott Baker's arm tendons (He can't strain them if they're not there, can he. Ivan'll put some rubber bands in there, or something.)
  • "Forget" Jason Marquis at the airport the next time he accompanies them on a road trip (This is a two part plan which may involve pretending that Target Field is closed for the season when he inevitably gets a taxi ride back.)
  • Once it gets to the later months, forbid anyone from telling Nick Blackburn that it's not May anymore.

Batting

As we saw yesterday, hitting is going to be this team's biggest obstacle (except for pitching, because Lord, do those pitchers suck). Here's a few quick ways to change that.

  • Trade Alexi Casilla for a large potted plant (the plant can trip runners as they round second, and will likely provide a bit more hitting power)
  • Put Joe Mauer into a time machine, and tell him to retrieve 2009 Joe Mauer (It'll be sad to see 2011 Joe Mauer go, but we liked the other one better, anyway. Besides, this is the kind of sacrifice a leader has to make sometimes. Cuddy would go back in time to get 2009 Joe Mauer, and he'd probably bring back 2010 Justin Morneau while he was at it.)
  • Create an unholy Frankenstein mishmash of Ben Revere's legs and Denard Span's arm. (Den Spavere will be the greatest outfielder ever, while Bard Revan can be safely DFA'd)
  • Trade Chris Parmelee for Albert Pujols (The only worry here is that the Angels may not believe that Parmelee is as good as Dick Bremer says he is. In this case, we include Carl Pavano in the deal. Who says no?)

Until my brilliant ideas are brought to the front office, we're stuck with what we've got. What we've got today is..

F. Liriano (0-0, a disappointing 0 k/9, and a awe-inspiring, but probably unsustainable 0.00 ERA)
T. Hunter (0-0, 3.20 FIP, 0 ERA)

Normally, I'd say that the Twins are totally screwed, but come on... this is Tommy Hunter we're talking about.ZiPs has him projected for something like a 5.00 ERA. Even the Twins should be able to get some runs off this guy, right?

2011 Twins Game Logs

2011 Game 111: Twins at Angels

140 Comments

Alright, who's hanging around for tonight's game? Last night was worth staying up for, but the previous game wasn't. How does tonight's look?

Francisco Liriano 7-8, 106 IP, 7.47 K/9, 4.84 BB/9, 4.67 ERA, 4.35 FIP, 4.35 xFIP, 0.9 WAR
Dan Haren 11-6, 161.2 IP, 7.29 K/9, 1.34 BB/9, 2.89 ERA, 2.68 FIP, 3.23 xFIP, 4.8 WAR

Good Lord, those are Cy-worthy numbers. He's got a career-low HR/FB rate that's helping a lot, but for the most part, he's just an awesome pitcher. Of course, this could be a marquee matchup depending on which F-Bomb shows up. But again, on the other hand, Haren doesn't walk anybody, so you know Gardenhire's going to preach aggressiveness. Aggressiveness to our guys seems to mean "Swing at anything and everything." This could be painful for the offense.

I think most of us have given up on this team doing anything meaningful from here on out, but I'm still hoping they pull off this unlikely win to keep my faint hopes alive for a few more days. Go Twins.