Maybe Kevin Slowey was just being a good sport.

After all, if he’d pitched well, this would have been a blowout and the obvious thing to do would have been to taunt Carlos Silva, who has lost 30 or 35 pounds we’re told (so he no longer looks like Hugo Hurley from Lost) and has lost 16 straight against American League teams. I’m still at a loss for how the Mariners could have spent $48 million for four seasons on a pitcher who was 24-29 with a 5.00-vicinity ERA in the previous two seasons. But, hey, that was baseball in the earlier part of this decade — like until last winter.

As it was, Slowey struggled too. “Battled” to use Gardy’s favorite word. He gave up five runs in four innings before finishing up his night’s work with two that were scoreless and perfect. It took consecutive game-tying and go-ahead doubles by Morneau and Kubel to give the Twins the 6-5 lead that they held until the end. (Bullpen: 3 IP, 1 H, minimal drama.)

One of the questions going into this season was about the next steps for a young rotation. One of the measures was going to be whether the starters could do a better job taking care of their own messes. In other words, working their way out of trouble without giving up a big inning and/or battling through a couple more innings than they would have in 2008.

Last night’s felt like a game in which Gardy could have gone to his bullpen (with justification) after the fourth inning — or after the Twins grabbed the lead in the bottom of the fifth. That may have been the route taken last season, but not here. Gardy and Andy basically relied on Slowey to right himself and finish with his strongest innings.

He figured some things out, reached the 100-pitch mark and gave way to Breslow, Crain and Nathan.

Afterward, Gardy talked about watching and listening to Slowey vet his performance and sounded kind of amused by the pitcher’s dugout self-analysis. Left unsaid, I think, was that Gardy was happy that Slowey righted himself after pitching a horrid fourth inning and held the one-run lead he was given as he reached the 100-pitch mark after six (after giving back a pair of two-run leads earlier).

Gardy could also take heart in Breslow listening to Rick Anderson in the seventh when the pitching coach went to the mound to chew out the lefty for a case of Blackburnitis, which is defined in the pitching coach’s desk reference as “a condition where the pitcher falls in love with his cut fastball and throws it to the exclusion (or near exclusion) of other pitches.” Breslow is the antithesis of a one-pitch pitcher and got through the inning, including sitting down Ken Griffey Jr. on strikes to end it.

Other good things happened: Morneau going Hrbek deep and then showing Gomez hustle to leg out a double; Span turning a good Silva change-up into a  two-run homer and continuing to make his case to be the outfielder of outfielders among the Minnesota Four, another night of professional defense.

It would be nice to head for Chicago was a 3-1 record. Interested to see today’s day-after-night lineup against an unspectacular lefty. Harris at third? Redmond back behind the plate? What’s the outfield du jour? Such questions are better to ponder with a 2-1 record than some of the alternatives.

Day game today. If mlb.com is too obvious for your office, you’ll find a play-by-play on the home page of startribune.com.

Just one more thought: Can FSN please bring back Marney Gellner?

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 9th, 2009 at 7:46 am and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.