Late Wednesday at the Metrodome, there was no doubt which team was feeling more pressure heading into Game 3 between the Twins and White Sox.

The White Sox are 2-13 in their last 15 games on artificial grass, and 5-11 in their past 16 road games.

“I’m not saying if we win [tonight] we’re in the playoffs by any means,” White Sox pitcher Mark Buehrle said. “We’ve got a good team coming in [Friday], in Cleveland. But we’re at home, we’ve got our home crowd behind us.”

The White Sox are at the end of a 10-game road trip, and their mood reminds me of the Twins’ after Saturday night’s loss at Tampa Bay. The Twins openly called Sunday’s game a must-win — a win they delivered behind Francisco Liriano — and that’s basically what the White Sox were saying last night.

“We had chances,” A.J. Pierzynski said. “But, you know what? We get them [today], these first two games don’t really matter.”

He sounded like he was trying to convince himself. As Aaron Gleeman notes today, Cleveland is 30-15 in its past 45 games. But the Twins will finish against a Kansas City team that has quietly put together an 11-2 run.

Looking ahead, here are the pitching matchups for the weekend:

White Sox
Friday: John Danks (11-8, 3.20) vs. Cleveland’s Scott Lewis (3-0, 1.42)
Saturday: Javier Vazquez (12-15, 4.46) vs. Cleveland’s Zach Jackson (1-3, 5.96)
Sunday: Mark Buehrle (14-12, 3.87) vs. Cleveland’s Cliff Lee (22-3, 2.54)

Twins
Friday: Francisco Liriano (6-3, 3.39) vs. Kyle Davies (8-7, 4.21)
Saturday: Glen Perkins (12-4, 4.50) vs. Gil Meche (13-11, 4.05)
Sunday: Scott Baker (10-4, 3.59) vs. Brandon Duckworth (3-2, 5.06)

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 25th, 2008 at 9:36 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.