Twins Vs. Orioles: Francisco Liriano Injured As Baltimore Completes Sweep In Minnesota

The Minnesota Twins lost to the Baltimore Orioles on Thursday afternoon, completing a series sweep for the away team. In even worse news, the Twins lost Francisco Liriano due to injury as well.

Liriano, Minnesota's starting pitcher, left the game after just two innings due to a shoulder strain. Reports are now indicating that he'll be placed on the 15-day disabled list with Rochester's Scott Diamond taking his place in the rotation.

As for the loss that counted in the standings, which now have the Twins at a disappointing 55 wins and 75 losses, the Orioles were able to score six runs in comparison to Minnesota's one. The lone Minnesota run came when Trevor Plouffe crossed the plate in the third inning thanks to an RBI double from Justin Morneau, his 29th of the season. Unfortunately, as the final score indicates, that wasn't nearly enough.

A ragtag relief performance made up of Alex Burnett, Anthony Swarzak, Matt Capps and Jose Mijares didn't prove to be terrible, but Swarzak -- originally scheduled to start Friday -- gave up five runs over 3.1 innings to seal the Twins' fate.

The Twins have now lost 17 of their last 22 gmaes, including five straight, so the rest of the season might not be pretty ... especially with the loss of Liriano.

Twins Try To Bust Their Slump Against Orioles

#Itsreallynothappening.

For those unversed in Twins fan Twitter dialect, local radio station 1500 ESPN created an entire campaign around the Twitter hashtag "#Itshappening". As in "it's happening--the Twins are coming back." When the Twins were storming back into the pennant race around the All-Star Break after a horrendous start to the season, we were reminded of all the previous seasons when Minnesota was able to come from behind to clinch the AL Central. Hence, #Itshappening.

It seems like those days were eons ago, doesn't it? Even the website dedicated to the campaign has thrown in the towel on the 2011 season.

At this point, the Twins are simply playing for pride against the similarly hapless Orioles. Unfortunately, even that is proving to be difficult for the injury-plagued Twins as they've been beaten soundly by Baltimore the first two games of the series. Baltimore's pitching staff hasn't exactly been lighting the world on fire this season, yet Minnesota has scraped across only two runs.

At first glance, Baltimore's starter Jeremy Guthrie would be prime for reversing the trend of Minnesota's anemic offense. But his 5-16 record is due to more bad luck on a bad team rather than bad pitching. He has a respectable 4.55 ERA and 13 quality starts this year.

Kevin Slowey will get his second start of 2011 for Minnesota. Slowey has spent most of the year on the DL (and in manager Ron Gardenhire's doghouse). He allowed six runs in 5 2/3 innings in a loss to the Yankees his last time out.

The first pitch at Target Field is scheduled for 7:10 PM CT.

Well, That Was Fugly

Boy, letting J.J. Hardy leave via free agency turned out to be a good idea, no?

No.

Hardy continued to torture the Twins for a second night, going 3-5 as Baltimore rolled through Brian Duensing much like the German Army rolled through France in 1940.

It was ugly from the outset, as Duensing couldn’t get a man out in the third inning. He left with a line of 2 innings, 9 hits, 7 runs, all earned.

Yikes.

And it was a low point for Duensing this year, as it was his worst outing of the year…which is really, REALLY saying something, as Duensing has had more than his fair share of terrible outing s this season.

He got in to trouble in the second, giving up a single with a throwing error…that he committed, a double, a single, and then a three run home run by Nolan Reimold.

As aneamic as the Twins have been at the plate lately, it was more than enough for winning pitcher Alfredo Simon, who went 8 strong innings.

Hey, remember when the White Sox came to town and I classified them as a ‘slump buster’ for the Twins?

It looks like the Twins are now the ’slump buster for the American League.

Sigh.

Twins Look To Rebound With Duensing

The Twins Summer Of Disaster continues.

After another Nick Blackburn injury on Monday, the Baltimore Orioles, 30 games under .500, rode into town and pretty much had their way with the Twins last night, winning rather easily by a score of 4-1.

Minnesota just can’t shake off whatever it is that ails them, and Brian Duensing is the next guy to try and stop the slide. Duensing, who is 8-12 on the year, has taken losses in his last four starts, and hasn’t looked particularity good in any of those starts, going 0-4 with an 8.53 ERA.

He also gave up three homers in his last outing against the Yankees, and last night the Orioles hit two, including one by former Twin J.J. Hardy. So it’s very much a moveable object against a resistable force at Target Field this evening.

Lineup for the Twins is:

Revere, CF
Plouffe, SS
Mauer, 1B
Morneau, DH
Cuddyer, RF
Kubel, LF
Valencia, 3B
Hughes, 2B
Butera, C

Twins Lose Despite Sterling Play By Revere

Twins CF Ben Revere made one of the best defensive plays of the year for the Twins, but it wasn’t enough as Minnesota fell to lowly Baltimore 4-1. He robbed Vladimir Guerrero on a shot to deep center in the top of the 7th, preventing a run from scoring.

Hey, at least J.J Hardy homered for the Tw—…what? Ooooohhhhh, that’s right. The Twins let Hardy leave and go to Baltimore…where he hit his 24th home run tonight.

Did I mention that the Twins are one of the worst home run hitting teams in all of baseball? Yeah.

Zach Britton, just off the disabled list, bested Twins ace Carl Pavano. Pavano wasn’t bad, giving up four earned runs in 7 innings, but it wasn’t good enough to top Britton, who went 5 innings and only gave up 1 run.

The Twins had decent scoring opportunities in the third, fourth, fifth, and seventh inning, but could only push one run across the plate, and that was a fielder’s choice force out in the third. On the night, the Twins went 0-7 with runners in scoring position.

Game two continues tomorrow night at Target Field.

Twins-Orioles: Disabled List Keeps Growing For Minnesota

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