Should the Twins send down Francisco Liriano

Here is today's subject it is a little bit different instead of comparing two prospects I am asking the question on every Twins fans mind.

1. Should the Twins send Francisco Liriano to Rochester to work on his mechanics.

• Argument for Keeping Liriano in the Majors: I am not going to argue that Francisco Liriano has had his problems this year. He is 2-6 with a 6.42 era but he has all the talent in the world. You can not forget about 2006 when he went 11-2 with a 2.16 era. He had Tommy John surgery after the 2006 season and missed the entire 2007 season. Last year it took him a while to get his command back and pitch anywhere close to what he did in 2006. He was very solid after he came up in July and did just what the Twins asked him to do when he came back and that was to quiet his mechanics down and throw more fastballs and less Sliders. Going into this year there was a lot of hope that he would be back to 2006 version after a winter of no rehab. Granted the results have not been real great but the bottom line is his velocity is up this year from 89-90 to 92-94. In his start yesterday he was throwing a 89 mile an hour slider so that is huge news. He is very close to putting it all together and being the pitcher that we all know he can be.

• Arguement for sending Liriano to Rochester: The bottom line is he is not getting it done and you can't keep on with a 6.42 era. Especially, on a team that has designs on making the postseason. Every time he goes out there he is giving up 5-6 runs and that is just not good enough. He has no control of the strikezone in that he falls behind and has to bring a cookie that teams are hammering on. What he needs is to spend another couple months in AAA to get his control because that is last thing he needs because his slider is coming back and he has a good changeup when he uses it. The thing about that though is what good are those pitches if your down 3-0, 3-1 in the count to every hitter because you can't hit your spots with your fastball. Bobby Cueller is one of the best pitching coaches in the game and a couple months working with him I believe would have Liriano ready to contribute during the stretch run where the Twins need the Franchise back.

• The bottom line is Francisco Liriano has been bad lately I mean really bad. The easy thing would be to send him to the minors to work on his problems. The problem I have with that is that in the best interest of the Twins when you have someone that talented in the minor leagues. I just really feel after seeing those velocity readouts that Liriano is very close to turning that corner and being very dominant once again. I just think the Twins should keep him up here to work with Rick Anderson on his location of his fastball. If they could get him to consistantly keep the ball down he would be awesome again. He has the most potential of any starter on the staff because when he is right he is dominant. However, you can't keep giving up 5 runs a game forever so if he doesn't pick it up in the next 2 to 3 starts I would relent and send him down to Rochester to work on his control.

I would really like to get some feedback on this topic whether you liked it, didn't like it, if you liked the new font or really anything let me know. You can either email me at travis_aune@yahoo.com or leave a comment in the box. Thanks for reading