Thursday, March 11, 2010

Live from Fort Myers: Day 1

As I mentioned, I'm going to be only sporadically posting on Twins Chatter this season (which is fine, we don't get many hits these days anyway). I'm still working on updating that logo (I promise to have it done before Target Field opens though).

Anyway, I took a somewhat impromptu trip down to Fort Myers this week to catch a couple of Twins spring training games, and caught most of Thursday's 8-3 win over the Orioles before the downpour set in. A beautiful night before the rain, and a good game to watch -- the projected Opening Day starting lineup took the field (Span, Hudson, Mauer, Morneau, Cuddyer, Kubel, Young, Hardy, Punto, with Baker on the hill) and the Twins scored a bunch early before the starters came out.

But the most impressive part of the game had to be the outing of Francisco Liriano. Not only did he toss two scoreless frames, but he genuinely looked like the F-Bomb of old, at least to my somewhat-trained eye. Spotting the fastball (generally-speaking) at 92-94 mph, with a filthy slider that was coming in over the plate at 84-85 mph -- guy looked dirty. The less-than-stellar Orioles lineup was almost helpless up there.

I filmed a little video w/my Flip cam below for you to see for yourself -- look for another report tomorrow!