CHICAGO — The Twins will send Francisco Liriano to the mound tonight, trying to stop their five-game losing streak.

They’re facing John Danks, who was superb in that 1-0 tiebreaker victory for Chicago on Sept. 30 and opened the season 2-0 with an 0.95 in his first three starts. But he is 0-3 with an 8.83 ERA in his past five starts and lasted just three innings in his last start against Toronto.

(*) Joe Mauer will catch tonight and likely DH again Thursday. Manager Ron Gardenhire is less thrilled about using Mauer as the DH when the team only has two catchers, but the Twins are going to take advantage while they have three catchers. Jose Morales, however, is likely headed back to Class AAA Rochester on Friday when Delmon Young’s time on the Family Emergency Medical List expires.

Mauer didn’t look to good in his first two at-bats on Tuesday against Mark Buehrle. Then he smacked his seventh home run of the month, extending his hitting streak to 12 games.

(*) Justin Morneau looked like he had hit his 13th homer in the fourth inning, when he crushed a pitch to deep right-center, but that ball got caught up in the wind, and Jermaine Dye caught it on the warning track. Morneau did double in the ninth inning, raising his average to .500 (10-for-20) on this road trip.

(*) Asked how he thought the players responded to last night’s postgame pep talk, Gardenhire made note of the loud reggae music pulsing through the clubhouse, Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds” again, and shook his head. Normally major league clubhouses are very quiet after losses, and here came those lyrics:

“Don’t worry … about a thing. ‘Cause every little thing … gonna be alright!”

“It’s a great response by that baseball team,” Gardenhire said. “What do you expect out of that team right there? I don’t know. I think they’ll be fine. They play hard. Tonight was just a little frustrating for me.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 20th, 2009 at 11:21 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.