Lots of weird bounces Friday night, and none of them helpful to the Twins. There was a violent bounce — Chris Parmelee colliding with the Mariners catcher. There was an unlucky bounce — Pedro Florimon's two-out double ricocheting into the stands. And there was a so-so bounce-back — Mike Pelfrey's gratingly slow return to form after elbow surgery.
If you're keeping score, the Twins were 0-for-3 on important bounces, and not entirely coincidentally, 3-0 losers in the final score to Seattle at Target Field.
"I'm a firm believer that you get out of this what you put into it," Pelfrey said after pitching five shutout innings, then surrendering the decisive runs in one five-batter span. "I'm pretty confident this is going to turn around."
He hopes to someday pitch, in other words, like Hisashi Iwakuma, who now has pitched 20⅔ innings against the Twins in his career without giving up an earned run. The Mariners' "other" ace improved to 6-1 with a 2.13 ERA — that's a better start than Felix Hernandez's 6-4, 2.38 stats — by sinking pitch after pitch under the Twins' bats.
"His ball disappears," Twins manager Ron Gardenhire said. "It was moving all over the place."
So was Parmelee, who might want to consider shoulder pads and a helmet if he's going to keep playing this way. Two nights after going headfirst down some camera-well stairs to make a catch, the right fielder collided with Target Field's moderately padded wall in making a run-saving catch of a Jason Bay fly ball in the fifth inning.
"That wall's not moving," the Twins strong-side linebacker said.
That was an encore impact, though; the hard stuff came in the third inning, after he connected with a Iwakuma fastball and knocked it off the left-field wall. After a Pedro Florimon single — one of three hits by the shortstop on the night — moved him to third, Gardenhire signaled for a hit-and-run in hopes of avoiding a double play. With Florimon moving, Jamey Carroll chopped the ball to the right side of the pitcher's mound. Parmelee hesitated.
