The Weekly Minnesota Sports Survey

#-1: Twins (Last Week: -1).  Well, I was wrong.  I said in last week's WMNSS that Francisco Liriano would not pitch against his former team after being traded to the White Sox, who came to Target Field for a three-game series mid-week.  In fact he started the Tuesday game.  It was surreal in that he didn't meet up with his new team because they were coming to his former location of operations several days after he was traded, so he just cleaned out his things, apparently went to his apartment and stayed there, then dropped his stuff of in the clubhouse opposite the one he had known for 2+ years.

However, let me say that my pessimism is well-known enough that they could predict that if Frankie did pitch against his old Twinks teammates, he'd school them.  And he did -- two runs on four hits over six innings, striking out eight from his old ballclub.  He didn't figure into the outcome; those two runs came in his final inning of work, where he had coughed up the lead for the White Sox, and four more runs came in after he left.  But that was the stuff Liriano should have given the squad on a consistent basis.  He was supposed to be the next ace.  Even if his shit Tuesday wasn't great, something like that was expected out of him most of the time.  So if I had a seat close to the visitors' dugout after he walked away in the bottom of the sixth, I would've screamed at him, "Why couldn't you have done that shit with the Twins, goddammit?!"

By the way, the Pale Hose came back to win that game, 4-3.  They then lost the series to Chicago the next day, a 3-2 loss.  But those one-run defeats were the only blemishes in a 5-2 screening week, which began when they completed a sweep of reeling Cleveland and finished with the club one win away from completing a sweep of dysfunctional Boston at Fenway Park.  Saturday night's 6-4 win was a good one; with two on and two out in the top of the ninth, Joe Mauer took a pitch just outside.  On a full-count fastball, Mauer donged one over the Green Monster to give the Twins the game.  The team could use some of that from Mauer more often.

Last game against the Red Sox Sunday afternoon, then they go to Cleveland for three.  After taking Thursday off, they host the Tampa Bay Rays for a trio.