Baker Improving, Liriano Still Struggling

Last night’s game against the Cleveland Indians was a great boost for Scott Baker and the Minnesota Twins pitching staff. Baker gave up just 3 hits and 1 walk over 7 innings of shutout baseball. The Twins scored 10 runs on the Indians, who just went through a week of having a sign posted that said “Fire Sale – Get ‘Em While They’re Hot”. Cleveland sent away two of their best players in C Victor Martinez and former Cy Young winner Cliff Lee. The Twins beat a team they should have beaten, and a team that they should be sweeping this week.

Video courtesy of mlb.com

Another bright spot in that game was Carlos Gomez going 3 for 4 with a 3 run blast. He was just a triple shy of hittin for the cycle for the second time in his career. If he keeps improving his plate discipline, he’s going to make people rethink their opinions of him. Right now, a lot of people look at Gomez as a defensive sub later in games, but he’s capable of much more than that. With his speed, if he gets on base, he always creates havoc. Manager Ron Gardenhire must be seeing some improvement as well, because Gomez has been playing an awful lot as of late.

Tonight, Francisco Liriano (4-10) faces a young lefty in Aaron Laffey (4-3). Liriano has struggled this year, sporting a 5.56 ERA. His strikeout to walk ratio is about 2:1, which isn’t great. Hopefully he can start to turn things around, but I’m not confident. He hasn’t won a game since June 28th in St. Louis, not that wins are a great stat but it shows that he hasn’t put his team in the position to win very often. If he can just avoid the big inning, he’ll be okay and the Twins should be able to beat up on a Cleveland Indians team that looks more and more like a minor league team after last week’s fire sale.

One last note, the Twins should sweep the Indians this series. If they can, and with a little help from Baltimore, the Twins will be in position where they could take the division lead against the Tigers this weekend. They could go into the series only 2 games back and that would give the Twins a chance to prove they can compete for the division. If they sweep the Tigers, taking the division lead, it would be a huge step in the right direction and a great boost of confidence in the clubhouse. The Twins have yet to go on a big run, so they are extremely overdue.

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Tags: carlos gomez, cliff lee, francisco liriano, indians, mlb, Scott Baker, Twins, victor martinez