Gibson Spins Gem, Parmelee Goes Deep, Bullpen Blows It
Today, the Minnesota Twins came into the day game matinée with the Boston Red Sox looking for an offensive explosion that has recently been so sorely missed. Unfortunately for the Twins, that didn’t end up being the result they were greeted with.
After another strong start on the mound by Kyle Gibson, the Minnesota Twins failed to do much of anything in the batters box, and spent to often trotting back to the bench after being turned away by John Lester.
Through the first 4 2/3 innings, Gibson failed to give up a single hit. With two outs, he ceded a ground rule double to Daniel Nava, only to retire A.J. Pierzynski to retire the side.
Gibson ended up leaving after throwing 7 strong innings and 102 pitches. He was consistent today throwing 66 pitches for strikes while striking out 8 and walking no one.
Unfortunately for the Twins, John Lackey was equally as impressive. Needing under 90 pitches to get through 8 innings, Lackey struck out 8 Twins batters while walking no one as well. Lackey did give up 3 hits to the Twins, two from Paremelee and one from Eduardo Escobar.
Brian Duesing relieved Kyle Gibson in the 8th inning and retired the Boston Red Sox order in a three up and three down succession.
Lackey came out for the 9th inning with a still manageable pitch count, and he was able to quickly retire Twins pinch hitter, Sam Fuld. Working around a walk to Brian Dozier, a call the Lackey clearly didn’t agree with, he got out of the inning on a Joe Mauer ground ball.
After Duensing retired the first two Red Sox batters in the bottom of the 9th inning, Jared Burton came in to retire Xander Bogaerts and send the game to extra innings.
Twins fans got to experience some free baseball and in the 10th inning they were rewarded. The Red Sox usual lock down closer, Koji Uehara, breezed through Josh Willingham and Kendrys Morales, but then stepped in Chris Parmelee. Parmelee got his pitch, an 82 mph splitter, and he deposited it over the right center field fence.
Casey Fien came on to close out the game for the Twins in the bottom of the 10th. There had been no information passed along by Ron Gardenhire or the Twins, pointing towards Glen Perkins not being available. Again, being without a closer in a save situation came back to bite the Twins. Fien gave up back to back home runs in the bottom of the 10th to David Ortiz and Mike Napoli.
Twins fans will be left scratching their heads after some poor bullpen use today. With the loss, the Twins fall to six games below .500 for the first time all season. Minnesota also just experienced their first series sweep of the season, at the hands of an AL East team.
The Twins head back home to Target Field tomorrow to face off against AL Central rival, Chicago White Sox. Yohan Pino will get his first major league start and the game’s first pitch is slated for 7:10pm.