Carlos Silva made his return to the Metrodome, and it didn’t go as he would have liked. The story of Silva’s return was overshadowed by another solid outing from Francisco Liriano. It was Liriano’s third start since his recall and his best thus far.

Through the first three innings, Liriano looked dominant. He wasn’t striking out two hitters per inning, but rather getting hitters to ground out softly and using few pitches along the way. In the fourth inning he ran into trouble with two outs. He allowed a single and walked two hitters before getting a fairly easy grounder to third base. Brian Buscher butchered the ball and two unearned runs scored in the twenty-eight pitch inning.

For Franchise it was no big deal. In the bottom half of the inning the Twins scored seven runs to give him the lead right back. After the fourth inning Liriano really settled down and lasted seven innings. It was the grounders and low pitch counts that was really impressive. Through the night, Liriano recorded twenty-one total outs; five were via strikeout, two via fly out and a stunning fourteen were via groundout. In addition to these numbers, Liriano used just eight and ten pitches in his final two innings of work.

Offensively the Twins took off early against their former teammate and never let up. After scoring two in the first inning with back to back doubles to start the game, the Twins put a seven spot on the board in the fourth and that was all they needed.

The offense was lead by Jason Kubel who collected three hits on the night along with homerun number seventeen. Six different players drove in runners for the Twins and everybody but Morneau and Gomez collected hits.

For Silva, the loss was number fourteen on the season, keeping him right on pace for twenty total losses on the season. At least he’s getting his eight million dollars.