Blowouts are cool.

Well, blowouts are cool when you're the blowouter rather than the blowoutee, and that's what happened last night.  Knowing that many of us would go to bed well before the game was over, the Twins helpfully scored all their runs in the early innings when we could see them.  No one player stood out that much, as several had good days.  That's a good way to score runs when you can actually do it.

We got the good Kyle Gibson last night, as he threw six shutout innings while giving up seven hits and one walk with three strikeouts.  He threw 91 pitches, which indicates he probably could have thrown another inning if need be, but with an eight-run lead the need did not be.  That gives the Twins back-to-back good starts from Hughes and Gibson, something their going to need if their going to stay within shouting distance of the .500 mark in the second half.

We remarked yesterday that so far this season Gibson has been really good or really bad, with not many starts in-between.  Cory and Gardy talked last night about how Gibson needs to learn to pitch well on nights when he doesn't have his best stuff.  This is something you hear all the time about young pitchers.  I think there's some truth to it, but that it's not quite as simple as it sounds.

There's certainly a mental aspect to pitching.  There are certainly things you can learn with experience.  But it seems to me that one's ability to win without one's best stuff is at least partly dependent on how good your best stuff is.  If you're Felix Hernandez and your best stuff is awesome, it's easier to win without your best stuff because less than your best stuff is still probably pretty good.  If you're someone whose best stuff is only about average to being with, you're going to have a hard time winning without it because less than your best stuff is pretty lousy.  So yes, there are things a pitcher needs to learn about the mental aspect of the game, but there's also an extent to which, if you want to win without your best stuff, you need to get your stuff better.

The final pitcher for Seattle was Brandon Maurer.  I imagine someone mentioned this, but we now have one more reason to be sad Joe Mauer is on the DL, because we were deprived of the Maurer/Mauer matchup.  Come back soon, Joe.

The Twins close out their four-game series in Seattle tonight, with Yohan Pino going for the Twins.  ESPN.com is listing Kris Johnson as the starter for Friday against Colorado, while MLB.com lists TBD as the starter.  I had guessed we'd see Samuel Deduno and his magical zoomball, but I don't have a problem with giving Johnson a shot because he's pitched very well at AAA and has earned it.  He'll turn thirty later this year, so he's not really a prospect any more, but maybe he can still put together something of a major league career.  Anyway, we're two games into our season-ending seventy-three-game winning streak.  We're still on track for 113-49!