Sometimes Kevin Jepsen sounds perplexed, and sometimes a little distraught. Then he'll turn determined, before becoming matter-of-factly analytical.
On Sunday, after his latest disastrous outing resulted in yet another Twins loss, it was all of the above. With even a little defiance mixed in.
Jepsen has endured one of the worst seasons of his professional career, and the fact that it comes immediately after what was probably his best season makes it all a little surreal. The 31-year-old closer has pitched in 24 games, giving up runs in 12 of them. His ERA is a team-worst 6.26. He has blown three of 10 save chances and has entered six tie games, failing to keep it tied in three of them.
And vs. the Rays, the team that shipped him to Minnesota last July? One bad pitch, he said with a shrug, doomed him from the start. With the Twins and Rays tied 5-5, Jepsen left a 3-2 fastball too high to Steven Souza Jr. leading off the ninth, and he watched it sail toward the horizon. It landed short of the bullpen wall in left-center, a sure double, but then Byron Buxton had trouble picking up the bounce, and Souza wound up on third.
And suddenly, Jepsen had no choice except to keep the ball away from the strike zone and hope he could fool hitters into swinging.
"To start the inning off like that, it's tough. You've got to strike out the side … so you've got to go for it," Jepsen said. "The only guy that matters is the guy on third. Obviously, it didn't work out."
It didn't. Jepsen got one strikeout but couldn't coax Curt Casali or Nick Franklin into reaching for pitches in the dirt, walking both to load the bases. Brad Miller hit a line-drive sacrifice fly to left, Evan Longoria lined a single to center, and the game was lost.
Jepsen doesn't believe he's too broken to fix. In fact, he doesn't think he's far from being the pitcher who went 10-for-11 in save situations last year.