Royals’ offense can’t get started in a 4-1 loss to the Twins in series finale
The Kansas City Royals ran out of time to try to come up with badly needed timely hits. Instead, their offense remained silent throughout most of Monday night’s series finale with the AL Central Division-leading Minnesota Twins.
Maikel Franco and Jorge Soler swatted a pair of doubles, but those were the only extra-base hits recorded by the Royals until the ninth inning in a 4-1 loss at Target Field. The Twins (15-8) won their third game of the four-game series after being swept by the Royals last weekend in Kauffman Stadium.
Outfielder Hunter Dozier hit a solo home run in the ninth inning to keep the Royals (9-14) from being shut out. He has homered in consecutive games.
Whit Merrifield missed a home run by several inches on a ball that crashed off the left field wall in the fifth inning. At the time with Gordon on base, a homer would’ve tied the score.
Instead, the ball caromed directly to Twins left fielder Eddie Rosario and Merrifield got thrown out at second base to end the inning.
“You give us another foot and a half and we’re tied a 2-2,” Royals manager Mike Matheny said. “You hit a ball off the wall and you run as well as Whit — and he came out of the box hard and going hard the whole time — and the ball kicked right to the left fielder.
“That’s a ball Whit’s got to be going hard on, and he was. The guy made a perfect throw on a ball that came custom-made right to him.”
Merrifield admitted he had trouble reading whether or not the ball was going to be a home run. He also suggested he’d have better gauge if fans were in the stands reacting.
“I thought I hit it out when I hit it,” Merrifield said. “I thought there was a chance that it wouldn’t go out because it was kind of low. I haven’t hit many balls off the wall that haven’t been a double. That was just kind of a mix of a lot of things, a hard ball off the wall right to him and good strong throw. Sometimes you’ve just got to tip your cap.”
Franco had two hits (2 for 4), while Nicky Lopez, Alex Gordon and Merrifield had one apiece. The Royals, who have homered in 10 consecutive games, were held to two runs or fewer in three of the four games in Minneapolis.
“One through nine we feel pretty good about our team just looking at them on paper,” Merrifield said. “We’ve just got to get some guys being more consistent. We know it’s there. We know the caliber hitters we have in this lineup. The issue is it’s not 162. It’s 60 games. We’ve just got to figure out how to get it going and get it going quickly.”
Twins designated hitter Nelson Cruz hammered a pair of solo home runs. He homered four times in the four-game series and went 6 for 12 with five RBIs.
Royals catcher Salvador Perez came out of the game after the top of the sixth inning. Meibrys Viloria replaced him.
The Royals scratched Perez from his start on Sunday due to blurred vision in his left eye, but Perez returned to the lineup after visiting with a specialist on Monday morning.
Matheny said Perez was removed from the game because he had issues seeing out of that eye again.
Royals rookie starting pitcher Kris Bubic, who turns 23 Wednesday, allowed two runs on four hits and four walks in 4 1/3 innings in his fourth big-league start. Both runs he allowed came in the fourth inning.
Cruz’s leadoff homer — he jumped all over a 1-1 fastball right in his wheelhouse — gave the Twins the lead, then a one-out walk to Marwin Gonzalez forced Bubic to spend the rest of the inning pitching with runners on base. A two-out walk to Max Kepler set up a Byron Buxton RBI single into left field.
Three of the four walks issued by Bubic came after he gave up the homer to Cruz. The Twins drove Bubic’s pitch count, and he exited having thrown 96 pitches despite not making it through five innings.
“I’ve been involved in a lot of low-scoring games, so I don’t want to dump one over first-pitch especially to a good lineup like this where they can do damage one through nine,” Bubic said of his tendency of falling behind hitters.
“But at the same time, it’s important to stay aggressive and not nibble. When I do then the pitch count will get up there pretty fast. That’s just something I’m going to emphasize a lot with myself going forward.”
Rookie reliever Tyler Zuber recorded the final two outs of the fifth inning to keep the score 2-0.
Right-handed reliever Ian Kennedy gave up a run after he entered the game in the sixth inning. Miguel Sano belted a leadoff double and scored on a Kepler RBI single. That put the Twins ahead 3-0 while the Royals had gone 0 for 4 with runners in scoring position to that point in the game.
The Royals put runners on the corners with one out in the seventh inning thanks to a Franco double and a Gordon single, but Adalberto Mondesi struck out swinging and Merrifield hit a ball up the middle that didn’t get through a shifted infield defense.
Cruz added his second homer of the game in the seventh inning off reliever Jake Newberry, who hadn’t pitched since Aug. 5, to push the Twins’ lead to 4-0.
Dozier’s homer in the ninth closed the scoring.
This story was originally published August 17, 2020 at 10:27 PM with the headline "Royals’ offense can’t get started in a 4-1 loss to the Twins in series finale."
