Although it took one more inning of at bats than desired, the Twins captured the win last night in walk-off fashion. After Joe Nathan blew the save in the top of th 9th the Twins bats rallied by loading the bases with just one out. Tampa Bay Manager, Joe Maddon, then made a surprise move by bringing rightfielder Ben Zobrist in as a 5th infielder with Justin Morneau up to bat.
Maddon’s decision actually looked quite smart as Morneau smacked a screaming ground ball directly at second baseman Akinori Iwamura. Thankfully for the Twins, Morneau’s ground ball was hit so hardly Iwamura was unable to turn the double play and the Jose Morales crossed home plate for the game winning run.
Francisco Liriano looked like he made a step in the right direction going 6 and 2/3 innings allowing just 2 runs and striking out 3 batters. Although Liriano did give up 7 hits, he always got himself out of a jam making good pitches. Too bad the Twins weren’t able to get Liriano his first win of the season, but let’s hope Liriano can walk away from this game with a positive.
Jim Souhan of the Star Tribune takes a deeper look at the “new” Francisco Liriano.
The Trib’s Twins notes take a look at former Twin, Jason Barlett, as well as Joe Mauer and Jesse Crain recovering from injuries.
As always, Seth Stohs has you covered for the Twins Minor League Report.
See who Josh Johnson gave his game ball to last night.
Aaron Gleeman has a list of his own Twins notes from last night.
Finally, I was at last night’s game and had a few thoughts of my own. I like that this team has some fight in it. I wouldn’t say we’ve looked too great at all this entire season. It wasn’t until last weekend in Cleveland where we had a game that we didn’t trail in at one point. That being said, I think this team seems to be in survival mode waiting for their leader Joe Mauer to return and their ace starters Scott Baker and Francisco Liriano to sharpen up. The Twins stand at 10-11 and just 1.5 games back of first place. If the Twins win tonight they can finish .500 for the month of April and given the slow start of some players and the early injuries of the team, I’ll call that a successful opening month.
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