CLEVELAND — After tonight’s 8-1 loss to Cleveland, Manager Ron Gardenhire said Francisco Liriano will make his next start but acknowledged that could be it, if things don’t improve.

Gardenhire said it would be easier to replace Liriano right now if there was someone definitely ready to take his place. More on this coming in my game story.

“We’re talking about a lot of different things,” Gardenhire said. “The one thing we don’t want to see is him get too far in the dumps. This guy’s got a high ceiling; he’s got great pitches. Right now, he’s pretty frustrated, and we’ll talk about that.

“I plan on him probably going out there and making his next start, but I’ll talk with [pitching coach Rick Anderson], and we’ll see where we’re at.

“The options are very limited, we can’t go with a four-man rotation. We just don’t have much starting pitching left. It’s not like we can say, ‘Take him out and put those other guys in.’ You start telling me who those other guys are, I’m sure some fans have some ideas, but they’re not on our ballclub.”

Liriano, who is 4-11 with a 5.63 ERA said, “Right now, whatever they want me to do, I just do it. I don’t mind if they put me in the bullpen, just whatever.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 5th, 2009 at 10:04 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.