Shortstop James Brian Dozier was called up from Rochester yesterday and made his major league debut against the Angels going 1 for 4 with a run scored. The soon to be 25 year-old (May 15) was drafted by the Twins in the 8th round of the June 2009 amateur draft and Dozier has a .305 batting average in 4 minor league seasons (345 games) and has not hit below .274 while playing 2B, SS, and 3B. It will be interesting to see if Dozier who only has 28 games of AAA experience can hold on to the shortstop role at Target Field. Dozier had a great spring and many fans thought that Dozier earned the Twins starting shortstop job in Fort Myers but GM Terry Ryan felt that Dozier needed some AAA seasoning. Although Jamey Carroll, 38 has played a decent shortstop so far this season, he is only hitting .212 and the team is off to a terrible start at 7-21 and some changes need to be made to see if anything can be done to salvage the season before the Twins go into a full sell mode and turn to a total rebuilding effort. Dozier is not going to turn the Twins around on his own but hopefully he can play a small role in getting the Twins moving.
The Twins lost again last night and are now 7-21 for the season and 10 games behind the division leading Cleveland Indians. I sure didn’t think I would be saying “division leading Cleveland Indians” this season but the Detroit Tigers are struggling as they come out of the starting gate and they are playing just .500 ball but I think they will warm up soon and put the Indians and all the other AL Central teams in their rear view mirror. The Tigers have their share of pitching miseries but not like the cellar dwelling Twins do. The Twins sent Francisco Liriano out to the mound again last night and once again Liriano let the team and himself down. Liraino threw 90 pitches in 5 innings while giving up 5 hits, 3 walks and 4 earned runs and even with this line he actually lowered his seasonal ERA to 9.45. Liraino had one decent inning last night and other than that looked like the same old Liriano. I just don’t know how the Twins can continue to send Liriano out there every fifth day when he is pitching as bad as he is. Liriano brings down the entire team everytime he walks out to the mound. Gardenhire and pitching coach Rick Anderson have tried everything including skipping a start with Francisco but to no avail. After last nights game Gardy was quoted as saying, “what can we do, we just need to send him out there”. I for one have seen enough of Liraino this season in a starting role, it is time to move Liriano to the bullpen where he can have some chance of success albeit in a relief role. You have to do something, you can’t pay Liriano the kind of money he is getting and have him under perform as badly as he has todate. The team is 7-21 for pete’s sake, what have you got to lose? Send Liraiano to the bullpen now and move Brian Duensing back into the starting rotation. Duensing is no Warren Spahn but he has to be better than Liriano and you still have that lefty in the bullpen that you want. Maybe this is not the way to build Liriano’s confidence but you have 24 other players on the team that shouldn’t be punished every fifth day when you send Liriano out to the mound.