Friday, March 28, 2008

Liriano To Start in Minor Leagues

LaVelle E. Neal III from the Star Tribune reports:

The Twins are very pleased with Francisco Liriano’s progress over his past two outings but feel he still needs a couple more starts. So they optioned him to Class A Fort Myers on Friday, which allows righthander Nick Blackburn to make the Opening Day rotation.

Liriano, who has struck out 12 batters over his last nine innings, will start for Fort Myers on Thursday. It actually helps him some because his wife, who is pregnant, will have labor induced on Friday.

Liriano then will join Class AAA Rochester for a start. Liriano should be able to sharpen his pitches over these outings and have the stamina to throw 100 in a game. He’s then expected to join the Twins on their road trip to Chicago, Kansas City and Detroit.

The Twins rotation against the Angels is as follows

Monday, Mar. 31: Livan Hernandez vs. Jared Weaver

Tuesday, Apr. 1: Boof Bonser vs Jon Garland

Wednesday, Apr. 2: Nick Blackburn vs Joe Saunders

Thursday, Apr. 3: Kevin Slowey vs Ervin Santana

and Scott Baker will pitch the first game of the series with Kansas City on Apr. 4 if all goes well Sunday.

2 comments:

Rebecca said...

You're so passionate about your subject, Tim.

Have you ever read King Kaufman's sports daily on salon.com? I went through a phase where I read him every day and I'm not even into sports.

Tim Sederberg said...

Never heard of him but I'll check it out.