Jose Berrios admitted on Saturday that he's frustrated over recent outings and is trying to fix some mechanical issues so he can contribute to a team that's chasing an AL Central title.
Berrios left the park moments after the Twins' 9-6 loss to the Tigers on Friday, before the clubhouse was open to reporters. The club viewed that as unacceptable, met with Berrios on Saturday and now will move forward. The righthander apologized to reporters before Saturday's game and was set to resume efforts to rediscover the form that made him an All-Star earlier in the season.
"Like you guys know I'm a competitor and we are battling to win the division," he said. "I felt last night that I'm not doing my job."
Berrios has an 8.44 ERA this month, a month in which he's left several fat pitches over the middle of the plate. That was not lost on manager Rocco Baldelli.
"I think there have been some moments where he hasn't executed where he's needed to execute and we've gotten burned in those moments," Baldelli said. "That doesn't make it easy to take. That doesn't make it easy to swallow. We're still going to spend a lot of time on the objective part of what's going on and breaking down things mechanically and getting into all those questions, but I think those are finer-point discussions that Jose will have with the pitching coach, the bullpen coach.
"I think pointing to one specific thing to kind of really just to get into isn't really fair."
Berrios feels his shoulder is flying open during his delivery at times, which leads to elevated pitches like the curveball that Ronny Rodriguez hit for a game-changing grand slam on Friday.
"I throw the pitch I want to throw," Berrios said, "but leave it in the zone [where] I don't want to leave it."
