The Twins will send Francisco Liriano to the mound Thursday, trying to avoid another sweep against the Yankees. Liriano held the Yankees to one run on four hits over six innings on May 15 in New York but took a no-decision, when the Yankees came back for three runs off Joe Nathan.

The Yankees will counter with RHP Alfredo Aceves. Here’s an interesting profile on Aceves from the New York Times. The Yankees signed him out of the Mexican League before the 2008 season.

(*) Joe Mauer officially moved into the AL batting lead tonight, at .388, and boy did he earn it. Hard to imagine a tougher trio of pitchers — in terms of their differences and individual degree of difficulty — than A.J. Burnett, Phil Coke and Mariano Rivera. Mauer, of course, went 3-for-5 with a double and a home run.

(*) The Twins are 0-6 against the Yankees, and 6-18 against the AL East.

(*) The White Sox are 16-6 in their past 22 games. And the Tigers overcame Zack Greinke, pushing the Twins 3 1/2 games back in the AL Central.

(*) Some more impressive work by Bobby Keppel tonight. That’s 11 1/3 scoreless innings in four appearances since he arrived from Class AAA Rochester.

“A lot of ground balls,” Manager Ron Gardenhire said. “He just keeps throwing it down there. [His sinker] drops off a table, and it’s huge.”

But Keppel threw 44 pitches in 3 2/3 innings and won’t be available Thursday, Gardenhire said.

Note: You can follow us now on Twitter (@JoeCStarTribune, @LaVelleNeal). Check back here in the morning for the lineups, unless we tweet them first!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 at 11:36 pm 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.