SEATTLE — Sonny Gray seemed to grow angrier as he talked after the Twins' 7-6 loss to the Mariners on Monday. Sort of like how he grew angrier as he pitched during an aggravating fifth inning.
Twins lose to Mariners 7-6 as angry Sonny Gray fumes over another bad day
There was one hard-hit ball all night by the Mariners against Gray, which made him all the more furious after the game. The Twins All-Star hasn't won a start since April.
July 18, 2023 at 11:04AM
"I'd rather give up back-to-back-to-back homers than continue to do what I'm doing," Gray fumed. "It's just the same thing over and over and over."
Gray faced 26 Mariners batters in his 5 2/3 innings, and only one of them — Teoscar Hernández, with a double into the corner — hit the ball hard. But over his final two innings, Gray issued four walks, hit a batter and threw a wild pitch, turning another dominating performance into find-a-way-to-lose performance art.
"I felt great. That's the frustrating part, that the something continues to happen over and over," Gray said after failing to earn a victory for the 13th consecutive start. "You're cruising, you're cruising, and then you have one inning where it blows up on you."
The defeat added yet another confounding and crushing chapter to Gray's season. The Twins have taken a lead at some point in 18 of Gray's 19 starts this season, including the last 12 in a row — yet they are now 8-11 when he starts, and an astonishing 3-10 since May 1.
Worse, Gray has now allowed 11 runs over his last two starts, inflating his ERA above 3.00 — it's 3.16 after Monday's five-run performance — for the first time all season. Until these past two appearances, Gray had not given up more than three runs in any game, but now has endured a six-run inning and a four-run inning in back-to-back games.
"He was exceptionally sharp early in the game. You couldn't have been any more crisp than he was. He had all of his stuff working," Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. "As the game went on, there were more breaking balls that just started as balls and ended as balls. He didn't have the feel for his breaking balls that he usually has."
That's what galled Gray most — that the Mariners didn't batter him, but that his own wildness was responsible for most of his trouble. In fact, suggested catcher Ryan Jeffers, his stuff may have been too good.
"It's the most I've seen him miss with the slider. It was getting a lot of swings because it was moving like I've never seen it move," Jeffers insisted. "It was just silly how much it was moving, how good it was. Sometimes the more it moves, the harder it is to have the feel for it."
Take the fifth inning, for example. With the Twins leading 2-0, Hernández hit his one-out double, triggering … something.
Gray's first two pitches to Ty France were strikes, but the next four weren't close and France walked. Gray then set himself up for trouble by hitting Mike Ford on the foot, loading the bases. José Caballero capitalized by hitting a routine ground ball to the perfect spot, between shortstop Carlos Correa and third baseman Donovan Solano, driving in Hernández.
J.P. Crawford popped up, setting up the critical matchup of All-Stars, Gray vs. Julio Rodriguez. After fouling off a fastball and ducking away from a sinker that glanced off his bat, the 22-year-old Mariners star seemed like easy prey for the veteran.
But a sweeper just off the plate didn't draw a swing. Gray tried the pitch again, but still Rodriguez let it go. And on 3-2, with the crowd standing and cheering, Rodriguez started to swing at a fastball down the middle but a couple of inches above the strike zone. He checked his swing in time, first-base umpire Mike Muchlinski ruled, and Ford trotted home with the tying run.
Another oddity: Gray has walked in eight runs in his 11-year career — but four of them this year, and three in his last two starts.
Jarred Kelenic, who said afterward that the Mariners could see Gray's exasperation growing on the mound, then blooped a ball off his bat handle and into left field, scoring two runs and giving Seattle a lead it would never surrender.
That the critical hits weren't hit hard only fed Gray's fury.
"It doesn't help, because you're not getting hit. That's the thing. Literally, the whole game, you give up one ball that's hit hard," said Gray, who also threw a run-scoring wild pitch in the sixth inning. "That's the frustrating part, that you're not getting hit hard. But if you're going to continually put guys on, they're going to score."
Enough to beat the Twins, anyway. Michael A. Taylor and Correa smacked back-to-back doubles in the second inning off Seattle righthander Logan Gilbert to give the Twins an early lead, and Alex Kirilloff added a sacrifice fly. Joey Gallo's 422-foot blast off the upper deck in center field, his first homer of the season on an 0-2 count, kept it close.
Max Kepler socked a three-run homer to right in the ninth inning, but by then, the Mariners had widened their lead against Oliver Ortega, and it didn't change the result. Jeffers took a called third strike, and the Twins' three-game winning streak was over.
But Gray's rage figures to endure for awhile.
"I've got to figure this out," he vowed, "and I've got to figure it out fast."
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