Twins Blow Gibson's Gem, Get Walked Off In Extras In 2-1 Loss

This is why pitcher wins can be misleading.

Both John Lackey and Kyle Gibson pitched masterful games and deserved the victory, but neither offense could generate anything to give them a lead. Gibson pitched the game of his career thus far, allowing only 1 hit (a 2-out ground-rule double to Daniel Nava in the 5th) while walking none and striking out 8 over 7 innings. However, Lackey was arguably better, going 9 innings while allowing only 3 hits and a walk to go with 9 strikeouts.

Chris Parmelee was the only Twin hitter that could muster anything as he had two of the three singles against Lackey, and in fact gave the Twins their lone run as well. Facing Boston closer Koji Uehara in the 10th inning with two outs, Parmelee just got an Uehara splitter over the right field fence and into the bullpen for a 1-0 lead.

Oddly, the Twins did not go to Glen Perkins to close out the game with the heart of the Red Sox order coming up. So far, the only thing I've heard was that Perkins has the flu,* so the Twins went with Casey Fien instead. He got Dustin Pedroia to fly out to deep right with Parmelee fighting the sun, but then he allowed back-to-back home runs to David Ortiz and Mike Napoli to lose the game.

* Edit: Perkins had a sore back and told Gardy that there was no way he could pitch today.

WP: Koji Uehara (2-1)

LP: Casey Fien (3-4)

Studs

Kyle Gibson (7 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 8 K), Chris Parmelee (3 for 4, HR, RBI)

Duds

Josh Willingham (0 for 4, 3 K), Eric Fryer (0 for 3, 2 K), Casey Fien (1/3 IP, 2 HR, 2 R)