Kernels’ Gibbons continues to roll

CEDAR RAPIDS - He claimed not to know, but his Cedar Rapids Kernels teammates doubted Sam Gibbons when he said that.

'You know. You know the exact number,” fellow pitcher Cam Booser kidded Gibbons, after he beat Bowling Green, 8-2, Saturday night at Veterans Memorial Stadium.

Gibbons saw his impressive shutout streak finally snapped at 28 1/3 innings. Bowling Green nicked him for a pair of runs in the seventh, marking the first time an opponent has scored against him in four starts.

The right-hander from Australia doesn't overpower anyone, but he has been on with a capital ‘ON.'

'Obviously I was a little bit aware of (the streak) going into this start,” said Gibbons, who improved his record to 6-2. 'I think it has been the confidence in that if I make a mistake, being able to come back and adjust to it straight away. A couple of times it would take me a few pitches. But the last couple of starts, if I've made a bad pitch, I've been able to come back right after that and make a good one.”

Gibbons' streak began with a pair of modest five-inning and six-inning shutout starts. In his previous start, he threw a complete-game shutout at Kane County.

The thing here was he got the first two outs of the seventh inning, only to be unable to get the third.

'For me, it's just been aggressiveness and locating his fastball,” Kernels Manager Jake Mauer. 'Moving it around, sinking it. He's gotten a lot of groundballs, a lot of outs early in the count. He had a real good outing last time at Kane County and was real good here again. It's been fun watching how his last four or five outings have gone.”

The Kernels (65-57, 24-18) scored single runs in the first three innings, with Tanner English pivotal with a leadoff triple, then a double in his next at-bat. Brian Navarreto hit a three-run home run in the seventh to put the game out of reach.

Nick Anderson and Luke Bard threw shutout relief innings each for Cedar Rapids, which hosts Bowling Green again Sunday afternoon at 2:05. It was the first affiliated inning of Anderson's career, as he was signed by the parent Minnesota Twins out of the independent Frontier League on Wednesday.

'Obviously, I'm super excited to be here,” said Anderson, a 25-year-old Minnesota native, whose fastball was in the mid-90s.

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