Late in September 2006, I was attending a small private college in upstate New York.  Over a weekend, I traveled down to Scranton-Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania to witness what would be the only rehab start for Francisco Liriano.  It was, I believe, the first round of the playoffs between Scranton and the Twins AAA affiliate, the Rochester Red Wings.  The trip started out with much enthusiasm, but that enthusiasm began to dissipate as I drove though the hills of the New York, Pennsylvania border.  See there were some ugly looking clouds in front of me and I feared my 4 hour adventure would be ruined.  For anyone who's lived in that region of our country, it can often be characterized by entire days of rain that never stop.  Much different from the summer storms in Minnesota that can hit in an instant and leave much the same.  Anyways, I arrived at the ballpark and to my surprise there were some fellow Twins fans traveling throughout the area just to catch a glimpse of the then 12-3 fenom.  As I suspected, the moment I got to the park the rains started.  Luckily however, the delay was only about an hour and play was set to resume.  One thing the rain did accomplish was filter out the common fan, and leave nothing but us hardcore enthusiast.  I was thus able to stand right above the bullpen as Liriano warmed up, snapping some nice closeups of that whiptastic wind-up in the process.  Later, I was basically able to set up camp right above the Red Wings dugout.  As the game started, Liriano took center stage.  Over the first two innings he dismantled the inferior Scranton lineup with ease.  For the final batter of the 2nd inning, Liriano whipped in two 96 mph fastballs, finishing off the beleaguered prey with that devastating 89 mph slider.  In that at bat though everything changed.  Much like his next start against the Oakland A's, Liriano would cruise through the first couple of innings and right as he'd turned up the adrenaline his arm would fall apart.  See in the Scranton game, nobody really knew anything was wrong because he was simply able to stroll off the mound after he had finished the 2nd.  The 3rd was another story.  While the inferior Scranton lineup never registered a hit, it wasn't hard to see that  something about Liriano wasn't the same.  The velocity was down, the command was off  and for some reason he kept on throwing week change-ups.  Well we all know the fate of the rest of that season.

The point of me recounting that little story, is that there were clear indications that Liriano was not ready to return to the majors.  For him, it was a lack of honesty about the condition of his 200 million dollar arm.  For the organization, it was a temptation to win that could not be resisted.  Anyways, his future and the future of this organization has changed as a result of the decisions made in those last couple of months of 2006.  Whether things would've or could've played out differently is debatable.  My position though is that it was sad sight to see an organization that had put such a high priority on not rushing it's youngster, finally cave into temptation and in so doing, jeopardize a career and a franchise.  Anyone still salivate over a 1, 2 punch of the two best lefties in the game and how different 2007 might have ended up?

As we stand now, a similar circumstance presents itself.  With a young season at hand, the supposed power houses of the Central Division are stumbling out at the gates and a team flirting at .500 somehow seems a lot better than it really is.  The weakness of the organization again appears to be it's offensive output and another off season whining about the state of the pitching staff seems all a waste of breath.  With the rain-out of the finally of the White Sox series, the Twins rotation again was set to only need 4 pitchers for the next round.  Yet, a decision has been made to recall The Franchise despite two lackluster rehab starts in the minors.  There are many arguments being presented, but despite them all I'm still asking myself the same questions:  What for?  Why now? Why risk it?

As before with Liriano stats don't tell the story (headlines after the rehab start claimed something to the effect of "Lefty doesn't allow a hit in 3 innings") but when you have a Rochester Manager, Stan I believe, saying that Liriano still has better command of his slider than his fastball, there should be a longer pause in the thought process of this organization.  The argument that scares me the most is that Liriano steps up with the level of competition.  Which just always brings me back to that young kid hunch over holding his shoulder, in front of the mound at the Metrodome, doing more preventable damage to that arm...

Anyways, let the debate begin!

Go Twins!