BALTIMORE — Before flying to Cleveland this morning, I studied up on Scott Lewis, the 24-year-old lefthander the Twins will face tonight at Progressive Field.

Last Wednesday in Baltimore, Lewis came three outs from becoming the first Cleveland pitcher to toss a shutout in his major league debut since Luis Tiant blanked the Yankees on July 19, 1964.

Indians manager Eric Wedge pulled Lewis, who had thrown 96 pitches, with a 7-0 lead in the ninth inning. The Orioles had managed three hits and no walks.

From what I’ve read, Lewis doesn’t have overpowering stuff, but he had such great command Wednesday he reminded some of 22-game winner Cliff Lee.

Lewis threw 67 of his 96 pitches — 70 percent — for strikes.

“That’s an incredible performance when you’re talking about a guy making his major league debut,” Wedge said. “But he never looked nervous. He pitched with a lot of confidence and poise.”

A DIFFERENT CHALLENGE FROM SUNDAY

The Twins will have a thorough advanced scouting report on Lewis, and the hitters will be studying the video.

I’d look for them to be pretty aggressive early in the count.

It will be much different than their approach Sunday to Baltimore’s Radhames Liz, who has overpowering stuff but is known to have fits of wildness.

A closer look at the Twins’ at-bats on Sunday showed how Liz foiled their best-laid plans by throwing strikes.

The first time through the order, eight of the nine Twins hitters took the first pitch. (If you guessed Delmon Young as the one who swung at the first offering, you’d be right, and he grounded to short.)

Liz threw first-pitch strikes to seven of the first nine, however.

Also, he fell behind Denard Span and Alexi Casilla 3-1 to start the game. They each took a called second strike before making outs.

After that, several players, including Justin Morneau, started swinging at Liz’s first pitch.

One of the most glaring at-bats was Brian Buscher’s to start the third inning. The Twins already trailed 4-0, and Buscher worked Liz to a 3-1 count before swinging at two fastballs — ball 4 and ball 5.

“We tried to be aggressive after [those early at-bats] and never really got anything going,” Morneau said. “We missed a lot of balls, and you’ve gotta give [Liz] credit. He throws hard enough, where if you’re just looking for that fastball, it makes everything else that much more effective, and he threw everything for strikes.”

A BIG-PICTURE VIEW

Look, I’m not trying to let the Twins off the hook for getting baffled by Liz and failing to sweep a team that was 2-10 heading into the series. But at least they went to the plate with a plan. Most of them anyway.

Late in Liz’s outing, it wasn’t pretty. Carlos Gomez took swings so big in his final two at-bats, it looked like he was trying to hit a seven-run homer. Casilla (1-for-8) in the series took some big swings, too.

The first four hitters — Span, Casilla, Joe Mauer and Morneau — combined to go 1-for-14 against Liz.

Aaron Gleeman has another good post this morning that talks about how the Twins have exceeded preseason expectations, but how that doesn’t make it easier to stomach that they’re missing a chance to take command of a very winnable division.

He points to their many ups and downs. The only thing I’d add is that when you field one of the youngest teams in baseball, you’re asking for a roller coaster ride. You know that going in, and you just hope the highs exceed the lows.

Note: Check back this afternoon for tonight’s starting lineups.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 15th, 2008 at 8:52 am and is filed under Twins thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.