Twins' Kyle Gibson has near-miss, but his reprieve is brief

Kyle Gibson watched Austin Jackson's loud fly ball rocket its way toward the left-field seats during the fourth inning Monday, and mentally kicked himself for the pitch. When Jackson's ball landed, it would have represented the first grand slam Gibson had ever allowed in the majors, and would hand the Twins a 5-0 deficit from which they were unlikely to recover.

"I was thinking I picked a really bad time to throw my worst changeup of the day," Gibson said.

But for one of the rare times this season, the Twins got a break. Jackson's bases-loaded home run somehow squeezed into a foot-wide gap between the foul pole and the Kasota Stone-faced wall — a foul ball by, oh, 4 inches.

"[It was a] pretty bad changeup," Gibson said with a smile, "but thankfully, he was just enough out front of it."

It took several moments for umpires to agree, but after huddling up on the infield, they stuck with the correct call: foul ball.

Trouble is, Gibson's reprieve lasted all of one pitch. Jackson got back in the box and slapped a fastball up the middle, scoring two runs and eventually dooming the Twins to their seventh straight loss, 4-1 to the White Sox.

"I thought it was even bigger that he gets the hit after that," White Sox manager Robin Ventura said. "You see it go foul, and you hope [Jackson] has something go his way. And it did."

"I tagged up, but I would have been surprised if Gene had sent me," Mauer said. "In that situation, it made more sense to let Eddie Rosario try to hit me in."

The Target Field crowd disagreed, booing its displeasure after watching Jackson's throw veer off line. Glynn, though, had no doubts. Had Mauer represented the tying or go-ahead run, he said, perhaps taking a greater risk would have been called for. Or "if he was running side to side, away from the plate, then it's a different deal," Glynn said. "But he was running straight-on toward the plate," his momentum giving him extra velocity on the throw.

Twins manager Paul Molitor said he agreed with the decision, even though Rosario grounded out to end the inning without a run.

"[Glynn] was a little hesitant to go ahead and make the last out and not have it be the tying run," Molitor said. "It's a lot easier to second-guess when the throw doesn't come in particularly strong. … We played it a little bit on the safe side there."

• Mauer on hearing boos as the Twins walked off with their seventh straight loss: "I heard it. It's a little disappointing — Opening Day. But you have to keep working, and you can't control any of that."

"Kurt did that on his own," Molitor said. "Frazier gave him a lot of room to play with there."

But Suzuki popped the bunt into the air, and pitcher Matt Albers caught it near the foul line, then whipped it to first base for a double play.

"It looked like he just reached for a pitch and didn't get an angle. He got below it, and [Escobar] didn't get a good read on it," Molitor said.