Posts Tagged ‘tolbert’
Francisco Liriano has thrown the 1st no-hitter of the young 2011 season. Was he dominant? No. Was he brilliant? No. But after 123 pitches, he still had his place in baseball lore. Here is a pitcher who came up big when it mattered the most. The game was critical, more for him than the Twins. Coming in to Tuesday’s outing, Liriano was 1-4 with a 9.13 ERA. If he hadn’t performed in this outing, he may very well have lost his spot in the rotation.And perform he did, but not in the typical fashion. In fact, Liriano’s 2 strikeouts are the 3rd fewest in a no-hitter. He also had 6 walks and let several runners on base. A lot of this win had to do with stellar defense. Shortstop Matt Tolbert caught a line drive for the final out, and made a number of huge plays while starting for Alexi Casilla. Denard Span made a fantastic running catch in left-center to rob Carlos Quentin of a hit in the fourth. Quentin was robbed again in the seventh when third baseman Danny Valencia made quite the snag on a hard-hopper and gunned it to first with a precision laser. Liriano gave credit where credit was due: “to be honest I was running out of gas,” he said. I just thank my teammates that they made some great plays behind me tonight.”