Twins pitcher Kyle Gibson is rolling, and there's still room for improvement

The Twins were hoping Kyle Gibson would take a step forward this season and, after a rough beginning to 2015, he has now thrown 17 scoreless innings. Included in that streak are the 6 scoreless frames he put up Wednesday against the A's, putting his overall season mark at 3-2 with a tidy 2.97 ERA.

Lurking within those nice numbers, though, is the continuation of some troubling trends from last year. An optimist could say it means Gibson still has room to improve; a pessimist could say Gibson is flirting with trouble and might regress unless those numbers improve.

The biggest red flag is that in 36.1 IP, Gibson has allowed 15 walks while only recording 11 strikeouts. That means that even when successful, he's often grinding out innings and relying on his defense (which he did Wednesday, getting through those 6 scoreless innings with two walks, just one K and 104 pitches needed). That was a critique last year, too, when Gibson allowed 57 walks while striking out 107 in 179.1 innings.

In the minors, he wasn't a dominant strikeout guy, but he got his share while limiting walks (377.1 IP, 337 Ks and just 105 BB).

Gibson is allowing opponents to hit just .256 this season on balls put in play, a very good mark (consider that no MLB team is below .261 in BABIP this season).

So the question becomes: Is that low BABIP number the product of good fortune or the product of the movement, location and variation of his pitches forcing weak contact (if not strikeouts).

The answer is probably: a little bit of both. Gibson is allowing hard contact on just 26.8 percent of balls put in play — comparable, and even a little better than, Phil Hughes' mark during an excellent 2014 season of 27.2 percent. Of course, Hughes had an historically good strikeout to walk ratio to go along with that.

Long story short: Nobody is going to complain about the results because 17 scoreless innings and a sub-3.00 ERA look good on any team, particularly the starting pitching-starved Twins. But there is reason to wonder if it's sustainable long-term (not the scoreless streak, but the good numbers in general).