I’m just glad Francisco Liriano is up here so we all can see what type of pitcher he is after relying on the reports of Twins officials and boxscores.

We kept hearing about how his slider was back, how his fastball was improving and that it seemed like he was getting close to the pitcher he once was. When Rochester manager Stan Cliburn told me during a radio show that Liriano hit 99 on the gun during one outing this season, part of me was like, `O.K., the gun had to be malfunctioning at the time.”

I think he’s close to what he once was. A fastball that topped out at 93 on Sunday, a slider in the low-to-mid 80’s instead of the slider from hell two years ago, and a change up that’s pretty good.  Can he gain a mile an hour or two with time? Sure. But there’s always a chance he won’t be more than he is now - which means he can still be a pretty good pitcher.

The Twins were very impressed with his bullpen outing on Friday. They saw late movement on his pitches, which is important. And pitching coach Rick Anderson saw a more confident pitcher.

“It was a good thing to pitch all those innings in Rochester,” Anderson said. “He doesn’t think about it anymore, His bullpen (Friday)  showed a whole different guy than we saw earlier.”

At the beginning of the year, Liriano threw his slider with more of a overhand motion, which differed from how he threw his fastball and changeup. Not only can hitters pick up on that, Liriano was throwing sloppy curves half the time with it. He told me Rochester pitching coach Stu Cliburn worked with him patiently to get him to throw his slider with the same three-quarters motion as his other pitches. And we all saw the results on Sunday.

“I think he was a little tentative with (throwing the slider),” Anderson said. “Now all three pitches are coming out of the same slot.”

It’s been very interesting to cover Liriano’s return from Tommy John surgery. He had to recover from surgery. He had to get his arm ready to pitch again. And he had to regain the confidence to throw all his pitches while avoiding the same mistakes that led to the injury.

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