Sorry this is so late. I was ready to post a hour after the game but the system shut down, my post was erased and I couldn’t access the system for awhile. I’ve been up stewing about it ever since.

Anyway, the best thing that happened on Monday was that Jason Kubel’s six-month old son is fine.

Kubel received word about 30 minutes before game time from his wife, Blake, that their son, Owen was having a scary reaction to something – they are still trying to find out what. Owen was rushed to a hospital in Minneapolis while Kubel took himself out of the game.

Kubel spent more than two hours at Safeco Field trying to monitor the situation from afar. Needless to say it was nerve-racking for him. But Owen’s condition improved and he was released. “They’re going to do tests to find out what happened,” Kubel said.

I don’t have kids, but it had to be tough for Kubel to be more than 1,000 miles away when his son was having trouble breathing. He looked like he had been through a lot.

On to regular programming….

Mike Redmond looked at me in the clubhouse and asked, “What happened?”

Whatever happened, it happened fast. The Twins seemed to be in full control of Monday’s game before the Mariners scored 10 runs in the seventh off of four pitchers. Everyone is to blame, but let’s start with Glen Perkins.

Perk got out of a bases-loaded jam in the sixth with just one run given up. But he loaded the bases again in the seventh before giving up a grand slam to Raul Ibanez, who had six RBI in the game. Perkins, facing the eight, nine and leadoff hitters, got ahead in the count but couldn’t finish the first two off. And it got worse from there.

“They found the holes,” he said. “I jammed (Yuniesky) Betancourt but he found a hole. Andy (pitching coach Rick Anderson) came out and talked about (Willie) Bloomquist and said throw him a good pitch down and away. Get him to hit a ground ball…..found a hole. Then I make a bad pitch to Ibanez and that sours the night.”

Perk wanted to go away with the pitch, but it went right down the runway. Grand Slam.

“That’s the last thing you want, a 6-5 game,” Perkins said. “Really disappointing.”

As Perk said, it was a game the Twins had in the bag before he made some bad pitches.

But the bullpen couldn’t bail him out.

Brian Bass faced two batters and gave up two hits.

Craig Breslow came in because Dennys Reyes was sent back to the hotel with food poisoning. He couldn’t get through the inning. In came Matt Guerrier, who gave up three earned runs in one-third of an inning.

“Our bullpen couldn’t get anybody out,” Twins manager Ron Gardenhire said. “Just terrible pitches and balls flying out all over the place.”

Gardenhire said the bullpen is beginning to get worn out. That’s why Perkins losing his grip on the game was so disappointing. But the bullpen has a 5.59 ERA on the road and 3.29 ERA home, which can’t be ignored.

The Twins need another reliever. I sense that they have lost faith in Bass and are worried that Guerrier and Jesse Crain are getting worn down. If Perkins gets through the seventh, the game is different. If the Twins score more runs – like they should have against a poor Mariners team – the game is different.

But if IF was a fifth we’d all be you-know-what. The reality is that Twins PR maven Dustin Morse will get up this morning and research the last time the Twins gave up 10 runs in one inning.

The game should have been in the bag.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 5th, 2008 at 4:19 am and is filed under Game threads. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.