Lucas Duda’s three-hit night helps Royals open second half with win over Twins

The Royals hadn’t played in Kauffman Stadium in 12 days.

In fact, they hadn’t played at all in four days when they arrived in Kansas City to face the Twins on Friday.

The All-Star break screeched to a halt the tottering train the Royals maneuvered through in a 5-21 end to baseball’s unofficial first half. The break gave the Royals a chance to go home, reset and try to ignore the 116-loss pace the team was careening toward.

It is exactly what Royals manager Ned Yost did. He climbed onto his tractor and took three days to mow the hundreds of acres of land he owns in Meriwether County, Ga. The grass had grown so high it grazed his knees. Yost had little time to think about baseball — and he hoped his players hadn’t either.

“I’m interested to see how these four days have helped,” he said before opening a three-game series here with the Twins, “because the frustrations were starting to peak in the last couple of days in Chicago.”

It seemed on Friday night the frustration, at least in part, had lifted. The Royals took a first-inning lead, provided just enough run support for surging starter Danny Duffy and defeated the Twins 6-5.

Salvador Perez delivered the Royals’ final blow, a stand-up double to center field that scored Alcides Escobar and had third baseman Mike Moustakas sliding head-first into home plate for the Royals’ sixth run of the game.

But it was Lucas Duda’s 3-for-4, shift-beating night that triggered the outpouring. Duda fought off a 1-1 fastball from Twins starter Kyle Gibson in the first inning, skying it over to the left side of the diamond for the Twins’ Eduardo Escobar to track. But as Escobar weaved in and out of foul territory, the ball blooped into shallow left field just inside the line. Whit Merrifield and Jorge Bonifacio — both in scoring position after Moustakas grounded out to first baseman Joe Mauer in the previous at-bat — scored before Escobar could try to mail the ball back to the infield.

Later, after the Twins’ Max Kepler narrowed the Royals’ advantage to 3-1 in the fourth, Duda led off the bottom of the frame with a single. When Hunter Dozier knocked a double to the gap in left-center field, Duda sprinted around the bases to home plate without a throw.

Duda further improved his .445 slugging percentage against right-handed pitchers in the sixth. He swatted Gibson’s high fastball an estimated 417 feet through the air and into the section above the Royals’ bullpen in right field for his eighth homer of the season.

“He’s seeing the ball well,” Yost said. “They’re doing the unique shift on him where they get a strike and then they get the four-man outfield. Doing a really good job the first two times of staying inside the ball, getting base hits.”

As the Royals improved to 28-68, Duffy earned his sixth victory and saw his ERA drop to 4.40, more than 2.5 runs below where it was two months ago when he owned the worst ERA among baseball’s qualified starters. In his last three starts, Duffy has thrown 20 innings and allowed just one run on 15 hits.

That lone run came Friday in the fourth inning, forced across the plate on Kepler’s sacrifice fly. Duffy had loaded the bases to start the inning, issuing a leadoff walk, allowing a hit and losing Mitch Garver on five pitches before Kepler lofted a ball to Alex Gordon in left field. But Duffy, who threw 114 pitches in seven innings for a second consecutive start, stranded both runners to get out of the jam. He scattered five hits and stranded seven Twins, striking out four along the way.

Royals reliever Wily Peralta allowed three ninth-inning runs on a pair of soft ground balls and a bases-loaded walk after Jason Hammel had surrendered a run of his own in the eighth. But the Royals, who’d left Chicago on Sunday reeling from their 11th loss in 13 games, survived the bullpen’s near-implosion for their third victory of the month.

“This is a big win for us,” said Duffy, who won for the first time at Kauffman Stadium since Aug. 22, 2017. “We’re really pleased.”

This story was originally published July 20, 2018 at 10:34 PM.