A disastrous fourth inning and a wobbly lead up to it doomed the Minnesota Twins, as they dropped their 11th series of the season by falling to the Kansas City Royals 7-4 on Tuesday night at Target Field.
The Twins now have as many series losses as wins (11) on the season. They’ll need a win Wednesday afternoon to stave off a sweep, which will be a tall order as the Royals are now 5-0 against the Twins this season.
The Royals took a quick 2-0 lead on Ervin Santana (1-3) in the second inning. Kendrys Morales took Santana to the limit on a full count walk, with Salvador Perez depositing an 0-1 pitch onto the berm in center field immediately afterward. Santana immediately allowed a single to Paulo Orlando right after, but wriggled out of the inning with no further damage.
The Twins returned fire in the bottom half as the bottom part of the order showed some life. Oswaldo Arcia doubled into the right field corner, and was immediately followed by an Eduardo Escobar single to cut the Royals’ lead in half. The Royals took the run back in the next half inning on a double from Whit Merrifield, a single from Lorenzo Cain and a run-scoring 3-6-3 groundball double play off the bat of Eric Hosmer.
Cain finished 4-for-5, and didn’t make his only out until Brandon Kintzler fanned him in the ninth inning.
Everything came crashing down for the Twins in the fourth. After Perez struck out, Orlando doubled to right field past Arcia on a play where he may have taken a poor angle. Cheslor Cuthbert followed with a single, and then Orlando scored on a wild pitch on which brought Cuthbert all the way around to third. Jarrod Dyson walked, Alcides Escobar singled to right — scoring Cuthbert — and Dyson ultimately scored on a single up the middle from Cain. By the time the dust settled, the Royals had added three runs to take a 6-1 lead.
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“Basically, my location was not good,” Santana said in his postgame comments. “The changeup was good, but the slider was not good.”
Santana characterized the Royals as an aggressive team, but added that they aren’t even necessarily the same team from inning to inning, an added element of surprise that can be tough on an opposing pitcher. “They’re an aggressive team,” Santana said. “They’re some times patient, and sometimes they’re very aggressive. They mostly swing at the first pitch all the time. Today, they were a little bit patient in the first two innings, and after the second inning they just started hacking.”
The Twins didn’t take the deficit lying down, however. In the bottom half of the fourth, the Twins pieced together a pair of two-out baserunners when Robbie Grossman walked and Arcia was hit on the toe with a pitch. Eduardo Escobar singled to right, and Orlando couldn’t come up with the ball cleanly, which allowed a pair of unearned runs to score as Grossman was being held at third by base coach Gene Glynn before the play fully unfolded.
In the fifth the Twins chipped away with another run to close the deficit to 6-4. Danny Santana walked, and he and Eduardo Nunez perfectly executed a hit-and-run to put runners on the corners with no outs. Mauer followed that with a single to left to score Santana, but the Twins went in order the rest of the inning as Miguel Sano hit into a fielder’s choice, Trevor Plouffe struck out swinging and Grossman flew to right to strand Nunez at third.
It wouldn’t be the last scare the Twins would put into the Royals, but it was the last they gave to starter Edinson Volquez (5-4), who finished the night with 6.2 innings and allowed just two earned runs with six strikeouts and three walks. The strikeouts were his most since May 2 against the Nationals, and he improved to 2-2 in road starts this season.
The Royals pushed across one last run in the sixth, as Ryan Pressly permitted a Dyson single and three batters later he was pushed across on a Cain single. Neither Pressly nor the rest of the Twins bullpen pitched poorly after they were pressed into duty by a shaky Santana start (3.2 innings, six runs on nine hits). The bullpen — Michael Tonkin, Pressly, Kintzler and Fernando Abad — combined for 5.1 innings of one-run ball with five strikeouts, zero walks and just four hits allowed.
Manager Paul Molitor mentioned after the game that the team was discussing what options they had at their disposal to get a fresh arm up, but no decision had been made at that time.
The Twins put together a strong effort to come back on closer Wade Davis (S, 12) in the ninth. It was the 7-8-9 guys doing the heavy lifting, as Eduardo Escobar hit a hustle double to right-center before Brian Dozier pinch-hit for Juan Centeno and worked a nine-pitch walk. Danny Santana followed with a seven-pitch walk as well — his second of the game, doubling his season total — and the Twins were in business with the top of the order coming up and nobody out.
But with the bases loaded, Davis bore down quickly. He fanned Nunez on a low breaking ball and then got Mauer with high heat before ultimately getting Sano to line to Cain in center for the final out.
The Twins fell to 11-34 with the loss.
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UP NEXT – Tyler Duffey (1-3, 3.30) vs. Dillon Gee (1-0, 2.90) – 12:10 Wednesday
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Notes and Quotes
- The Twins fell to 7-17 against the Royals since the start of the 2015 season.
- The Royals have beaten the Twins eight straight times at Target Field.
- Eduardo Escobar had a season-high three hits.
- Grossman was hitless (0-for-3) but walked to reach base for the fifth straight game since joining the team.
- The Twins fell to 23 games under .500 for the first time since Sept. 25, 2014, when they lost 4-2 to the Detroit Tigers to fall to 68-91. Trevor May was the losing pitcher in that game. He started and went six innings with seven strikeouts and three earned runs. Max Scherzer was the winning pitcher, and Joakim Soria — who pitched against the Twins on Tuesday night for the Royals — was credited with hold.
- Santana on if he sensed early it wouldn’t be his night: “No, because you know every time I take the mound, I just keep my mind positive and trust all my pitches. I’m not trying to be negative.”
- Santana on not giving the bullpen a lift when it’s already short-handed: “It’s tough, especially the way we’ve been using the bullpen. It’s really, really tough. We want to do our job, and be able to stay in the game longer, but with how things are going now, it’s really tough.”
- Santana on if it’s tough to be upbeat: “No, it’s not. I try to make a good pitch, and try to get a double play or something like that, but it’s just not working right now.”
- Molitor on ninth-inning frustrations: “You’re facing one of the best closers, and we made him work at the end of the game there. It was good to see Dozier have a good at-bat there. Danny, and Esco finished off a good night there with a leadoff double. They had a little session out there with the pitching coach, and he made pitches to Nuni and Joe, and Miggy looked like he got it off the end of the bat a little bit. But that was just a small part of the game. We talked about hopefully getting a good start, and that didn’t happen, and it forced us to piece the game together the best we can.”
- Molitor on his bullpen, and late-game hitting: “It’s been a tough go for our bullpen. We’ve talked about how much they’ve been used. We hung around, we just couldn’t get enough big hits. We had a couple guys have good nights, but when you give up seven, it’s a tough deficit to overcome.”
- Molitor on Ervin: “I compared it a little bit what happened to Ricky (Nolasco) last night. His fastball command wasn’t particularly good. The slider was something where he’d throw a good one and then a not-so-good one. The changeup really didn’t play into what he did tonight. It’s usually a pretty big pitch for him, right and left. Tonight it just wasn’t very effective, so he had to go slider-fastball pretty much.”
- Molitor on the Royals offense: “They make it tough. They have a lot of long at-bats, they foul off pitches, they put balls in play and they find holes. You can’t say a lot of balls were scorched, but they did their job. They made him work and were able to put some runs on the board.”
- Molitor on possibly having Volquez on the ropes in the fifth: “I thought we had some opportunities off him. We expanded the zone too many times with his changeup and some of his pitches that we didn’t force him to throw enough strikes. He had some easy outs because of that. In that inning, we had a little something going but it didn’t go very far. You look for those opportunities when you get a guy like that, and you try find a way to get back in the game but he minimized.”
- Molitor on if the team needs to add another pitcher: “We’re talking about what we need to do and who’s available tomorrow. It’s getting pretty thin. Nothing’s been concluded as of yet as far as what’s going on with that.”
- Molitor on the getting 5.1 solid innings from the bullpen: “We’re extending people. Pressly had a good night. He gave up a run on a really good pitch that Cain dumped into right field. Tonkin did a nice job. Fernando continues to pitch well. Kintzler….those guys are taking the ball and I give them credit for that, because they’ve been asked to do that quite frequently.”
- Molitor on Sano’s recent struggles: “I think he’s a little off. It’s kind of like the Park conversation. He gets in between and you see a lot of check swings. He’ll recognize pitches for a while, and then he doesn’t. Then he has at-bats where he works himself back in the count and he can’t finish. He’s like a lot of our guys; he’s young and frustrated and trying to get on track. It hasn’t been real consistent as of late.”
