Friday, August 11, 2006

About that back of the rotation...

Throughout the year the weakness of the Twins has been the back of the rotation, and that was even before Liriano went down. Baker, Bonser, Lohse, Mike Smith, etc. all tried and pretty much failed.

However, as the season wore on, it looked like we had our ace in the hole - Matt Garza. His Minor League numbers were fabulous, he has great stuff, and it was almost like everyone (myself included) expected him to come up and immediately continue with the domination.

All of that came down with a thud on Friday, as Garza allowed 7 runs in 2 2/3 innings. Granted, it was against a good offensive team in Toronto, but it doesn't help ease any fears about an already think back of the rotation. Boff Bonser starts Saturday, and if he continues to pitch how he has basically all year in the Majors, well, we have a problem.

The White Sox and Red Sox also won, putting the Twins 1.5 games out of the Wildcard just 2 days after they had taken the lead in the race. It's not too unexpected for them to fall back at this point and you can't get too worried, since they're right in it, but it's disheartening to see them claw their way to taking 2 of 3 in Detroit and then come back home and get hammered in 2 stright to Toronto.

Hopefully things pick up in the weekend.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It had to be expected that Toronto will play all out, since this is basically their last gasp. If Minny can win out the weekend, against Toronto's lesser pitchers, all would be ok. I have a feeling Boof and Brad will take care of the weekend. Just a hunch. Go TWINS!