From the Twins' media relation department:

The Minnesota Twins announced today that they have optioned lefthanded pitcher Francisco Liriano to Single-A Ft. Myers.  Liriano is scheduled to start for the Miracle on Thursday night at Hammond Stadium.  In five starts for the Twins this spring, Liriano was 2-2, 4.02 ERA (15.2 ip, 7 er), allowing 14 hits with nine walks and 15 strikeouts.

The Twins now have 27 (2 non-roster) players in camp: 12 pitchers, three catchers (one non-roster), six infielders, six outfielders (one non-roster).

Catcher Eli Whiteside and outfielder Jon Knott will be reassigned to minor league camp following tomorrow's game in Bradenton vs. the Pirates.

Dave Notes

Jon Knott is a 29-year-old right-handed batter that shows impressive pop in his bat, hitting 70 home runs in the last three years (only 288 AB in 2007 -13 HRs).  While he gets on base about 36% of the time, he still needs to work on his contact abilities, with only 2006 grading as a good season (.280 batting average) in the last three.

In an interview with Scout.com in 2004, he had this to say:

-I've read that you've got journals that record every at-bat and every pitcher you face. What motivated you to start doing that?

We had those in college (Mississippi State), they kind of did scouting reports for us. I know that helped me out a lot. My first year I decided I was going to keep track of some of the pitchers, going through a long season like this knowing that I'm going to face these guys more than once and that it would give me a little advantage the next time I faced them. I've made adjustments to it, added things and taken away things. I think it has helped me out a lot.

-You share some of that info with guys on the team?

Oh yeah. Most of the guys on the team come right over to me if it's been a little while since we've faced a guy or if they know we've faced him before but they can't really remember what he had. They'll just come over; it usually gives you a little refresher about what the guy looks like, what arm angle he was throwing from and what kind of stuff he had.

-You were undrafted after your senior year of college and signed with the Padres as a free agent?

Yeah. I think the Padres called right after the draft and said 'As soon as you get healthy, come out, we'll have a try-out camp for you.' It took me just about the whole summer. I went to try-out camp in September, I'd been hitting and I went out there and did pretty well and they signed me the next day. I reported to spring training in February, 2001.