Offense was hard to come by on Wednesday night at Target Field, as the Minnesota Twins couldn't quite muster enough in the scoring column to slide past the Baltimore Orioles in a 2-1 defeat.
Although there were plenty of promising signs in the loss, such as third baseman Trevor Plouffe extending his hitting streak to 16 games and pitcher Francisco Liriano striking out 10 men, the Twins still ended up falling short after opening the series with a pair of victories. Getting the better of Liriano on the evening was Baltimore starter Tommy Hunter, who toss 74 of his 106 pitches for strikes through 7.1 innings to pick up his fourth win of the year.
With his name firmly entrenched in trade talks across the country, Liriano went six strong innings of four-hit ball to take the hard-luck loss. Of his 10 strikeouts, which comes on the heels off a 15-strkeout performance, Liriano made free-swinging first baseman Mark Reynolds strike out a whopping three times.
Rookie Cole De Vries will get the ball on Thursday for the fourth and final game of the series, as the surging Twins will hope to wrap up the series in impressive fashion.
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