A Little Bit of Everything: Liriano Has a Rough Night
Pitchers have shitty nights. It's a death and taxes thing. It's unfortunate that it came on the first start of the season, on a night that the Jays' bats were alive and on a night Russell Martin had off. But it happens.
And to kill this particularly story: this wasn't Salty. It was ugly, but it wasn't Salty.
Liriano gave up five runs on three hits, and walked four. And didn't get out of the first. Russell Martin could not have saved this.
Jesus could not have saved this. And the Lord is great at baseball.
When asked "WTF?"*, Liriano said:
* 'WTF?' is a legit journalistic question. They teach you that the first day of journalism school.
The prevailing talk last night was "why is Martin sitting when he's the Liriano whisperer?"
The lesson from the last couple of seasons is Martin wears down and having a back up who only caught one guy and was an offensive black hole was not conducive to optimal Martin. I think they want to see what they have in Saltalamacchia sooner rather than later. They want to determine if he is going to be a workable, usable backup. And, as many pointed out last night, Saltalamacchia caught Liriano for a good portion of the spring and Liriano had the best spring. And Saltalamacchia had a hit last night.
I want to know if I need to learn how to spell "Saltalamacchia".
I would like Russell Martin to catch Liriano as much as possible. But I’d also like Russell Martin to catch into October. Through October. He should be able to catch on a float going down York and Front in early November.
Liriano is not such a special snowflake that he needed his little buddy to fix him. He didn’t throw strikes and the strikes he did throw went bad places. It happens.
Parts of the bullpen (Loup, Leone, Tepera, Smith) were great. Troy Tulowitzki had a double and a homer, and Josh Donaldson hit a bomb to centre field.
He's this dude. We have this dude.