Francisco Liriano just helped Escogido win the Domincan Winter League championship. Aaron Gleeman has more on Liriano's fine playoff run. In short, he was awesome. Check out Aaron's piece for more on that.
Liriano didn't pitch the full season, but got plenty of work in the playoffs. Along the way, he racked up a lot of strikeouts, and not much else. This has the strange effect of prompting me to post something using counting stats. It should also have two other effects -- exciting Twins fans and pushing-up his fantasy draft positions.
Across all four 2009 winter leagues (Mexico, Venezuela and Puerto Rico) only five pitchers got more Ks than Liriano, and it puts the lefty's run in some context. There are a few playoff games remaining in the other three leagues, so this isn't a final set of numbers. Pitcher performance is totaled across teams and leagues.
| Pitcher | SO | BB | Hits | Outs | Runs |
| Luis Mendoza | 94 | 38 | 104 | 315 | 46 |
| Joshua Schmidt | 71 | 30 | 60 | 223 | 27 |
| Jose Sanchez | 68 | 26 | 87 | 253 | 30 |
| Jeff Farnsworth | 66 | 29 | 106 | 253 | 49 |
| Hector Rodriguez | 65 | 39 | 54 | 244 | 18 |
| Francisco Liriano | 64 | 7 | 32 | 142 | 7 |
Schmidt managed to hit 13 batters, which I feel is worth mentioning (no one else on the list had more than 5, Liriano had 2).
Escogido now represents the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean Series. If the Twins let Liriano pitch, they might just win that, too.