Mixed results for Twins’ newest pitchers in blowout loss to Padres

Taj Bradley rebounded well in his second outing with the Twins, recovering from a rough team debut last weekend. Mick Abel, another young pitcher acquired at the trade deadline, not so much.

Bradley gave up one hit and one run across five innings Saturday night against the San Diego Padres. Once he exited, well, it was a new ballgame for the Padres offense.

Abel faced 12 hitters and recorded only three outs, giving up seven hits and six runs (five earned) during a blowout 12-3 loss at Target Field. The Padres erased a two-run deficit in the sixth inning and turned the game into a rout with a seven-run seventh.

The Twins have not won consecutive games since Aug. 6-8. They have lost 11 of their past 15 games, and Saturday they needed a position player, infielder Ryan Fitzgerald, to pitch the final inning.

Bradley, in a game filled with a lot of bad and ugly moments, served as one of the biggest bright spots. The righthander displayed many of the qualities that made him a promising young starter with Tampa Bay, striking out six.

He even added a new approach to this outing: He studied a scouting report.

“I just never did it at all,” said Bradley, who noted he didn’t study lineups or numbers in his previous 68 major league starts. “I was kind of out there blind the whole time. After my last outing, I had a lot of soft contact, so I figured now is the time. OK, get your head in the books, learn a bit about the hitters you’re going up against.”

“I mean, yeah, they give you the numbers,” Bradley said. “They think it’s the best thing, and they are right. It’s just me being hard-headed. Me finally getting out of my own way. It’s like, OK, this is the game you’re playing and they’re studying you just as much as you’re studying them.”

Bradley didn’t give up a hit until two outs in the fifth inning. Padres catcher Elías Díaz launched a first-pitch fastball into the left field bleachers for a tying solo homer.

The first 17 batters against Bradley produced little hard contact. Bradley pitched around two walks in the first inning, escaping when Ramón Laureano lined out to second baseman Luke Keaschall. His velocity was up, reaching 99 mph with his fastball, and he drew swings and misses with all four pitches in his repertoire.

“Honestly, whatever helps guys take the mound with confidence and allows them to do their job well, that’s the way that I want them to think,” said manager Rocco Baldelli, who heard from Bradley that he was new to reading scouting reports. “If he’s throwing the ball like that, whatever his mentality is, that’s the mentality he should have because that’s the stuff of a very good major league pitcher.”

The Twins built an early lead. They had three straight batters reach base in the third inning, which included an RBI single from Trevor Larnach.

It was all downhill from there. Abel, one of the two players the Twins received from Philadelphia in the Jhoan Duran trade, was at least temporarily moved to the bullpen because the Twins have six healthy starters and want to continue using a five-man rotation.

Abel’s 39-pitch sixth inning began with an error from shortstop Brooks Lee, who booted a routine ground ball. Laureano and Gavin Sheets hit back-to-back RBI singles on ground balls through the infield, before Abel left the bases loaded with a lineout to Keaschall at second base.

“It was tough,” Abel said. “Not executing in two-strike counts, or at least getting the ball down when I wanted to, or getting it up like I wanted to. I still had some deep counts, but I think today was more of the two-strike execution.”

BOXSCORE: San Diego 12, Twins 3

MLB standings

Brooks Kriske replaced Abel, and he didn’t fare any better. Jake Cronenworth hit a two-out, two-run double and Díaz followed with a two-run homer for his second homer of the night. Laureano added a two-run homer off Twins lefty Génesis Cabrera in the eighth inning.