The Twins Unleashed High-Powered Offensive Chaos On The Poor Mariners

If you’re looking for a single image to serve as an encapsulation of the Mariners’ 20-7 loss against the Twins tonight, it’s tempting to go with starter Christian Bergman grimacing after allowing his first home run of the night or doing the same after his second home run or exiting in the third inning, or maybe the bullpen giving up its tenth run of the night, or maybe Eddie Rosario hitting a solid quarter of his previous career-high season home run total in just one night. (Three home runs. For Eddie Rosario.)

All fine choices! But none quite so good left fielder Ben Gamel trying and failing to make a catch before crashing into the outfield wall and falling down:

Yeah. That’s it. That’s allowing a franchise-high 28 hits in a 20-7 loss. (A franchise record for Minnesota, too, as it happens.)

A silver lining for Bergman, maybe, is that it’s not his worst start of the year. Nine runs off of 10 hits in less than three innings, but it could be worse and it has been—like, say, two weeks ago, when he gave up 10 runs on 14 hits. Which is very much the opposite of a silver lining for the Mariners when you consider that Bergman still entered the day with a lower ERA than either Felix Hernandez or Hisashi Iwakuma this season.*

Ouch.

*Clarification, 1:25 a.m.: updated to make clear that Bergman entered the day with that stat.