Notes, quotes and comment

Bartolo Colon made what was presumably his sole minor-league tune-up start Thursday night for Rochester, the Twins' Triple A affiliate. His stat line was not particularly encouraging: 3.2 innings, 4 hits, 4 runs, 2 walks, 5 strikeouts. He threw 76 pitches.

Those determined to find a reason to believe can latch onto the strikeouts. I'm inclined to pay more attention to the walks, because Colon's success in recent years was based largely on the fact that he almost never walked anybody. His command was impeccable until this season. This year it has been emphatically peccable.

Still, the Twins roster lacks a fifth starter, and somebody's going to get called up to start Tuesday against the Yankees. Colon is lined up for that assignment. I expect him to get that start, and I expect him to get shelled.

I would also expect Felix Jorge to get shelled if he gets the start. It's not like the Twins are sitting on Clayton Kershaw. They have no good answers available.

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The Chicago White Sox picked up another prospect haul Thursday by trading lefty-starter Jose Quintana to their North Side neighbors. The Sox got four minor leaguers, including current Baseball America coverboy Eloy Jimenez and pitcher Dylan Cease.

Quintana is a quality pitcher, and he's under team control for several more seasons; that's the kind of asset any organization would value, and I'm sure the Twins would have loved to land him. But they do not have any prospects as highly regarded as Jimenez, a power-hitting outfielder, and their best pitching prospects are roughly comparable to Cease. 

The Sox farm system is getting pretty stocked up with the returns of the Adam Eaton, Chris Sale and Quintana trades. If their player development system gets this right, they figure to be mighty tough around 2020.

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Baseball's back today from the All-Star break, and hooray for that.

Francisco Liriano and the Sox

Francisco Liriano delivers Saturday in a
familiar setting but an unfamiliar uniform.

A day or so after the Chicago White Sox traded for Francisco Liriano, Sox general manager Kenny Williams said that the organization, and specifically pitching coach Don Cooper, "(sees) some things from (Liriano) we think immediately will show some better results."

From this distance, it appears that something was: Pitch him against the Twins.

Liriano has had two starts against the Twins since the trade; 1-0, 2.77, with 17 strikeouts and 11 baserunners in 13 innings. On Saturday he made a short-notice start and threw seven one-hit innings against his old mates.

Against everybody else since coming to the South Side, Liriano is 2-1, 5.97. He had pitched his way out of the Chicago rotation, just as he had early in the year with the Twins.

Liriano was only starting Saturday's game because the first-place White Sox got rained out of a Thursday game with the second-place Detroit Tigers and the game is to be made up today. The weather washed out a mano-a-mano matchup between Chris Sale and Justin Verlander; the two aces pitched Friday instead, making each unavailable for today's makeup.

The Sox chose to push rookie Jose Quintana, originally scheduled to start Saturday, back a couple of days to face the Tigers. (He'll be opposed by Doug Fister.)

That backdrop — Liriano losing his rotation spot, the rainout in a crucial series, the reshuffled rotation to have Quintana face the team Chicago has to beat — made ridiculous Dan Gladden's analysis of the White Sox' likely playoff rotation.

Sale and Jake Peavy are the obvious top two guys, but then, proclaimed the Twins radio broadcaster during Saturday's game, it's got to be Liriano. How about Quintana, prodded Cory Provus. "Too young," said Gladden.

Quintana is young (23) and inexperienced, and the White Sox have handled him rather gingerly of late. He's also more reliable than Liriano, which is why he's getting the ball today.