Scott Baker shake n' baked the Colorado Rockies Wednesday night with a career-high 12 strikeouts over seven terrific shutout innings. The right-hander surrendered just two hits and a walk without allowing a runner to reach second base, retiring 13 of his final 14 batters. In truth, it was pretty awesome.
Despite continuing the double-play trend by hitting into three more -- the Twins have managed to ground into a major league-leading 75 of them -- the offense held on for a 2-1 victory with a little help from Danny Valencia and Nick Punto.
They'll look for a sweep Thursday afternoon at 12:10pm against The Incredible Ubaldo Jimenez, who is 12-1 with a minuscule 1.16 ERA and 84 strikeouts over 13 starts this season. Having faced the Twins only once in his career, the 6'-4" righty is winless against them with a 3.86 ERA. Delmon Young has a 3-for-3 lifetime mark against him with two doubles... and that was 30 pounds ago!
Meanwhile, Francisco Liriano will take the hill for Minnesota, coming off three straight wins, two in which he reached double-digit Ks. Looks like we're in for quite the pitcher's duel.
- How impressed are you with Scott Baker?
- What should we look forward to Thursday?
- Nick Punto!
- You haven't forgotten about the TwinsCentric party on Saturday, have you?
And as always, hit me up via email if you'd like to tip me off to any sites, info, events or general shenanigans.
