Twins 4, Pirates 1
by Adam Peterson on Mar 30, 2010 8:26 PM EDT
in Game Recaps
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PrintFrancisco Liriano continued his impressive spring, pitching 6 innings, giving up 3 H, 3 BB and striking out 8 to lead the Twins to a 4-1 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates this afternoon in Fort Myers. Liriano's 3 walks increased his spring total to 5, but on a day where he gave up 9 ground ball outs without a single fly out, it was an excellent way to end his spring training. Even though he was facing the Pirates, who are not expected to compete in this year's NL Central division, Pittsburgh chose to leave most of their expected opening day starters at home. By my count, only Bobby Crosby (SS), Ryan Church (CF) and Delwyn Young (2B) played today. But even taking the opposing lineup into consideration, it was another promising outing. And if Liriano can dominate this season, watch out American League!
For the Twins, we very well may have seen the Twins opening day lineup against RHP. With Span, Mauer, Morneau, Thome, Kubel from the left side, and Hudson and Punto switch hitting, I expect today's lineup to give opposing right handers quite a headache. Jason Kubel homered in the 5th to put the Twins up 1-0. In the 7th, a Cuddyer single followed by Thome, Kubel and Hardy walks and a Nick Punto single put the Twins up 3-0. And a Wilson Ramos bomb over the high center field wall in the 8th made it 4-0. Game over.
Stars:
- Francisco Liriano: 6 IP, 3 H, 3 BB, 8 SO. 9 GB, 0 FB. Solid. Very solid.
- Wilson Ramos: 1 AB, HR. Is this his closing argument for the backup catching role?
- Jason Kubel: 2 AB, HR. Boy, if he can build on a solid 2009 season, wow.
- Drew Butera: In order to get him an at bat, Gardy pinch ran him for Thome. Then in his one at bat, he doubled to right field in the 8th.
Duds: Nope. I'm not going there today. Sure, Orlando Hudson and Justin Morneau went a combined 0-6, but I'm having nothing but good vibes at this point. So there.
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winter league quality opponents
Let’s hold our horses on Liriano (or anyone else in spring training). The Pirates, who have questionable major league talent on their starting major league squad, weren’t even playing most of their starters. This was a good performance, against the B team.
^^^^^^^^^^
dear god, leave that advertising crap at the ESPN boards
My guess is that its a "bot" that's doing these...
They manage to post several dozen spam messages from a different account each day to a couple of dozen different SBNation boards. They got to have a script automatically doing it.
Our IT team is working on it.
Until then we just have to check new members for a while and ban them.
New captchas!
I recommend making new members correctly identify Nick Punto’s face.
"There are only two things that are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein
That's my thinking too...I hate going to other sites, wanting to get involved, and then having to wait.
Chances are that, by the next day, I’ve forgotten all about it or else the conversation has moved on.
Just have to see how effective we can be by pre-empting their comments.
I've killed 100 of them within an hour of posting
If we can just train people not to reply tot heir garbage, we can reduce the spam slag.
"You're thinking too much. Just have fun." -- Bennie "The Jet" Rodriguez in Sandlot
Is flagging helpful
I try to flag them as spam if I see them popup. Is that helpful or not?
Larry...
I’m a little worried about Liri getting that fifth rotation spot. He didn’t seem to have any confidence in his stuff last year. I hope he can get his good stuff back because we need our bullpen this year. It’s going to be scary without spas-face, I mean Joe Nathan.
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