For eight innings Friday night, Kansas City Royals starter Nate Karns and his bullpen comrades had the Minnesota Twins eating out of their hands. That all changed in the ninth, as the Twins got the proverbial “bloop and a blast” to tie the game off Royals closer Kelvin Herrera. Then in the 10th, Royals reliever Al Alburquerque inexplicably could not find the strike zone, which ultimately led to a game-winning sacrifice fly off the bat of Jorge Polanco to give the Twins an unlikely 4-3 win at Target Field.
The win improved the Twins to 6-0 against the Royals on the season and was Minnesota’s seventh straight over the AL Central foe dating back to last season. A win on Saturday — weather permitting, of course — would set a new record for consecutive wins against the Royals, a team the Twins traditionally dominated after the turn of the century.
Two-out hits were the story early for the Royals, as each of their first three hits and all three of their runs came with two down in the inning. The Royals broke through for their first run off Hector Santiago in the second inning, as Jorge Bonifacio walked but was erased on a fielder’s choice off the bat of Whit Merrifield, who eventually came around to score on a two-out single by Cheslor Cuthbert.
Santiago sandwiched two outs around an Eric Hosmer single in the third inning, but followed that up by allowing a two-out homer to Bonifacio to left field to push the Royals ahead 3-0 on a night where Karns was cruising.
The Twins pushed their only run of the night against Karns across in the fifth, as Robbie Grossman opened up the inning with a home run to right. At that point and up until the ninth, the Twins trailed 3-1, though they squandered chances to score all night, including in the third, fifth, sixth and eighth innings — each of which saw the Twins leave at least one runner in scoring position.
Royals closer Kelvin Herrera took over in the ninth and got Polanco swinging on a filthy changeup before Jason Castro served a single into center. With Byron Buxton due up to represent the tying run, manager Paul Molitor pushed the rest of his chips into the middle of the table by pinch-hitting Kennys Vargas, who rewarded his manager’s faith by pummeling a 1-0 changeup into the stands in right-center to tie the game at three apiece.
Brandon Kintzler pitched a clean, if a bit eventful 10th inning before getting Bonifacio to line a 2-0 pitch back to him. Kintzler threw to second to double up Hosmer and the threat was neutralized.
Alburquerque entered in place of Herrera in the 10th and promptly walked Joe Mauer on four straight pitches. With Ehire Adrianza — who pinch ran for Miguel Sano earlier in the game, more on that later — due up next and ready to bunt, the 30-year-old righty again misfired on four of five pitches to issue his second straight walk. This prompted Royals manager Ned Yost to go get the lefty Travis Wood to square off with Max Kepler, who also walked on five pitches to load the bases. After taking a first pitch strike, Polanco smoked a ball into left that was caught by Alex Gordon, who hit the cutoff man with the throw home, but the relay was not in time as Mauer slid across the plate for the game-winning run to give the first-place Twins their 21st win of the season.
With the win, the Twins are officially a month ahead of last year’s pace, according to Phil Miller of the Minneapolis Star Tribune:
Here’s what we saw from our vantage point:
Santiago was all over the place, but battled
The lefty threw 94 pitches in five so-so innings — including 58 strikes — but had a number of three ball counts early and just was all out of sorts. In fact, that came just one day after a similar notion could be held against Ervin Santana, whose location was scattershot against the Rockies in the first game of the day-night doubleheader on Thursday.
Santiago allowed just three earned runs despite allowing nine Royals to reach base over five innings, and fanned just one batter. That was the penultimate batter he faced in Bonifacio, and the pitcher was the benefactor of a somewhat iffy call from home plate umpire Adam Hamari.
It’s not the worst call you’ll ever see, but Bonifacio walked away from the plate clearly surprised it was called a strike, and it’s not hard to see why.
Don’t sleep on how good Tyler Duffey was at bridging the gap from Santiago
Duffey tossed a pair of shutout innings to keep the Twins in the game late, fanning three batters and keeping the bases clean while lowering his ERA to 2.53 on the season.
His knucklecurve was pretty nasty, I might add.
On 27 pitches, Brooks Baseball has Duffey with a stellar six swinging strikes — two on his four-seamer and four on the knucklecurve. Overall, that’s a robust whiff rate of 22.2 percent. That’ll work.
As a whole, the bullpen did yeoman’s work for the Twins on the evening, tossing five shutout innings with just three hits allowed, three strikeouts and no walks.
Kintzler was arguably the Twins’ least effective pitcher on the night — and got the win
We bang this drum semi-frequently, but Friday night showed how little a “win” means in this day and age — at least as far as individual pitchers are concerned. Kintzler pitched one inning, allowed a pair of baserunners and needed a line drive double play to sneak out of an otherwise dicey situation in the 10th inning to secure the “win” — his second of the season. You could easily make an argument for any of the other four Twins pitchers who worked on the night to garner consideration for the win, with the possible exception of Santiago.
Grossman quietly keeps on truckin’
After going hitless in six straight games, Grossman has hits in each of his last two games and his slugging percentage and on-base percentage are both back up over .400 after Friday’s performance. It was a pretty classic Grossman game, as it featured a couple hits and a walk. One of those hits left the yard:
https://twitter.com/TheRenderMLB/status/865746251756834816
Grossman is now hitting .261/.409/.402, and may continue drawing starts near the top of the order as long as he’s setting the table for guys like Sano, Kepler and others. Even when he isn’t hitting, he’s getting on base. For instance, over his last eight games, he’s walked eight times.
Mauer is quietly creeping toward respectability
His single in the fourth after Grossman’s home run extended his season-long hitting streak up to eight games, and he’s batting .323 (10-for-21) over that stretch. He’s now hitting .260/.324/.354 on the season and at least trending in the right direction. If he can continue to be a line mover with Grossman ahead of Sano and friends, this is a very good lineup.
Vargas straight up murdered a baseball
You can bet there was some communication between Polanco and Vargas after the former struck out on a nasty changeup. And even if there wasn’t, Polanco still saw six pitches, which gave Vargas plenty of time to get a look at the changeup, a pitch on which Herrera was holding opposing hitters to just a .529 OPS against this season.
https://twitter.com/GustanDeportes/status/865769428503449600
The homer was the fifth of the season for Vargas, who is hitting just .233/.254/.517 with the big club this season. With a move needing to be made to make room for Saturday starter Adalberto Mejia, it’ll be worth watching to see if Vargas is the roster casualty. It wouldn’t be the first time the Twins have sent out a hitter who hit a massive home run the day before, as Danny Santana had done the same the day before he was designated for assignment.
Some of Molitor’s moves late were….unusual
It started in the seventh inning, as Eduardo Escobar hit for Eddie Rosario with lefty Mike Minor on the mound. Escobar has hit lefties well in his career (.282/.315/.455), but the platoon splits aren’t that disparate for Rosario over his career (.266/.288/.453 against righties | .277/.302/.400 against lefties) to make up for the clear defensive difference between the natural outfielder and the infielder who happens to be OK out there. That move could have easily cost the Twins, as Salvador Perez singled on a drive into left that Escobar looked a bit tentative on. Rather than streaking in to catch it as Rosario might have, Escobar played it on a hop, allowing Hosmer to pick up second with one out in the 10th.
With two outs in the ninth, Sano singled to move Grossman to second, and was promptly lifted for Adrianza as a pinch runner. That move makes more sense in the ninth inning than the eighth, and more sense with one out rather than two. Instead, the next batter — Max Kepler — lined out to left, and Adrianza ultimately hit in Sano’s place in the 10th inning. Fortunately, it was against Alburquerque, who couldn’t find the strike zone if he’d been given a GPS. The Vargas move paid off in the ninth, but it also meant the team would have to take Grossman off the bench and lose the DH. Had the game gone longer than 10 innings, it would have gotten interesting with just Chris Gimenez left on the bench.
One of the moves did pan out in a sense, however, as Adrianza made an excellent play in the 10th inning. Hosmer hit a ball that Adrianza dove to his left and fielded, then came up throwing to second to nip the speedy Lorenzo Cain for the first out of the inning. Not only did it keep the double play in line, but it erased a much quicker runner off the bases — keeping him out of scoring position.
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Notes and Quotes
- This marked the Twins’ second walk-off win of the season. The other was Mauer’s walk-off home run against Boston on May 5.
- The Twins are 1-1 in extra-inning games this season.
- The home run from Vargas was the first pinch-hit homer by a Twin since Castro on April 22. It was also the second for Vargas, who also did so on July 2, 2016 against the Rangers.
- Brian Dozier snapped an 0-for-14 streak with a single in the ninth.
- The Royals fell to 3-13 against AL Central foes this season. The Twins are 14-11 against divisional opponents.
- Molitor on his team battling: “You welcome those comebacks when they happen because in today’s game with bullpens the way they are, it just seems like they’re less and less frequent. We stayed with it and gave ourselves a chance. It was one of those games where I thought maybe the missed opportunities would come back and bite us, but our bullpen did a really nice job once Hect came out of the job to keep putting zeroes up and give us a chance.”
- Molitor on Vargas: “What can you say? I don’t know if he was looking for that changeup or what, but he was all over it. That was a huge lift. We found a way to navigate through the 10th with Kintz, and took advantage of some wildness and found a way to win a game.”
- Vargas on if he was looking for the changeup: “Not really. I was looking for a fastball and I just reacted to the changeup.”
- Vargas on when he started getting ready to hit: “When I’m on the bench, I start swinging in the sixth inning to try to get ready for any moment in the game.”
- Vargas on if he knew he got it after hitting the ball 443 feet: “*laughs* I knew I put a pretty good swing on it. I knew I got that one.”
- Santiago on the Twins coming back after he left: “It’s huge. Every time we talk, I say I want to go out there and give my team a chance to win. I didn’t get as deep into the game as I wanted to, but three runs and gave them a chance to hold it right there. The bullpen did a great job. Vargy came off the bench against that guy and got a big hit. It was a great all-around team win.”
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