Nine years after drafting Kyle Gibson in the first round and six seasons into his major league career, the faith the Minnesota Twins have had in the lanky right-hander has finally been rewarded on a consistent basis.
He has gained a greater level of confidence in himself, too.
Gibson on Thursday struck out nine batters over eight easy innings for the Twins, who handed Tampa Bay ace Blake Snell his shortest start of the season and beat the Rays 5-1 after a two-hour rain delay.
Photo: AP
“Just had to add to the caffeine and keep the body loose,” Gibson said.
Eddie Rosario hit a two-run homer in the seventh inning against Taiwanese reliever Hu Chih-wei for more cushion, but Gibson (4-6) was already well in control on his way to consecutive wins for the first time this year.
He gave up five hits without a walk and the only run he permitted came on a sacrifice fly by Kevin Kiermaier in the eighth.
“Hopefully, he pitches as well in the second half and gets a lot more wins to show for it,” Minnesota manager Paul Molitor said.
Fernando Rodney relieved Ryan Pressly in the ninth to get the last two outs and his 21st save, preserving the seventh victory in eight games for the Twins.
The Rays had their five-game winning streak ended after a rare clunker from Snell (12-5), who lasted only three innings and threw just 43 of 75 pitches for strikes.
The left-handed pitcher took the second-lowest ERA in the American League into the game, with just two runs allowed over his last 28-2/3 innings, while winning each of his past four, but he was in trouble every inning and found himself trailing 3-0 after back-to-back RBI doubles by Robbie Grossman and Jorge Polanco in the third.
“For whatever reason, he just wasn’t able to make the pitches that we’ve seen him make so many times this year,” Rays manager Kevin Cash said.
Snell was not so upset about the early hook as he was about his own mechanical trouble that he believes he could have prevented.
“It was just a lot of me making mental errors and not correcting them as fast as I should have,” Snell said. “They capitalized.”
The Twins hustled through the third and Gibson took it from there.
He dropped his ERA to 3.42, more than a full run lower than his career mark.
He also has by far the best strikeout rate of his career, just short of an average of one per inning.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier