Mike Minor sets tone as Kansas City Royals top Red Sox, win 1st series since early June
The Kansas City Royals finished their six-game home stand with a flourish Sunday afternoon thanks in large part to key contributions from a pair of veterans in left-hander Mike Minor and outfielder Jarrod Dyson.
Minor’s fourth quality start of the season served as a steadying force and Dyson’s two-out, two-run double in the third inning — culminating an 11-pitch at-bat — gave the Royals a lead they didn’t relinquish in a series-clinching 7-3 win over the Boston Red Sox in front of an announced 20,736 at Kauffman Stadium.
The Royals (32-38) took two of three games in the series to record their first series victory over the Red Sox since they took two out of three in Boston’s Fenway Park July 28-30, 2017.
The victory also gave the Royals their first series win since they swept a two-game set against the Pittsburgh Pirates in Kansas City May 31-June 1.
“A good series against a good team,” Royals manager Mike Matheny said. “We saw a lot of different components come together with the great start, the timely hits. Just so many things happened today. Everybody contributed. Good defense. One of those games where you saw a lot of the different pieces that we were hoping to see.”
Royals leadoff hitter Whit Merrifield went 2 for 5 with a home run and two runs scored. He also collected his 800th career hit in the majors with a third-inning single to right field.
Shortstop Adalberto Mondesi hit a pair of doubles and scored two runs before coming out of the game after the sixth inning with discomfort in his side. Mondesi, who recently returned from a hamstring injury, began the season on the injured list with an oblique strain.
Nicky Lopez and Hunter Dozier had three hits apiece. Salvador Perez went 2 for 5 with an RBI and a run scored.
The Royals matched their season high of 15 hits, set on Opening Day, and six players enjoyed multiple-hit games.
“A great win,” Perez said. “Every time we win is a good win, you know that. Especially the way we were playing the last couple of games. We got swept by Detroit. But you know, baseball is crazy. We need to prepare ourselves to play every day, to be ready to try to win games. Yeah, I think it was a pretty good win today.”
Heading into the bottom of the third, the Red Sox (43-29) led 2-1 with both runs having come courtesy of Kike Hernandez’s two-out, two-run home run in the second.
The Royals swung the game with three runs — two that scored with two outs — the third. Merrifield singled and moved up to second on a Carlos Santana groundout. Perez’s RBI single up the middle tied the score 2-2.
Mondesi’s second double of the day put runners on second and third. After a Kelvin Gutierrez walk and a Dozier strikeout, Dyson came up with two outs and the bases loaded.
The Royals entered the day having gone 15 for 102 (.147) at the plate with runners in scoring position in their previous 14 games.
“We’re in a spot where we’ve been so many times,” Matheny said. “We’ve got the bases loaded, less than two outs. Then we have a tough punch out. Just when it looks like that could be a huge momentum shift, Dice comes up and puts together one of the best at-bats of the year against a guy with four swing and miss pitches.”
In his previous at-bat against Red Sox starter Nathan Eovaldi, Dyson hit a 3-2 pitch back to the mound for the final out of the second inning.
The second time around, Dyson fouled off seven pitches, including five in a row with two strikes, before he smacked a fastball up over the outer half of the plate into left-center field.
Perez and Mondesi scored as Dyson sped all the way into second base for his third double of the season.
“The approach was not to hit it back to the pitcher like I did my previous at-bat,” Dyson quipped. “I was just trying to get me a fastball I could handle. They were feeding me a lot of fastballs away, and I just wanted to stay with that approach.
“I actually was trying to hit something through the six-hole (the traditional shortstop position) because they left the gap wide-open for me, and I hit a line drive right over the shortstop. I’ll take it. That at-bat, I wasn’t coming off the fastball no matter what he was throwing, and I just put some good wood on it.”
Minor (6-4) held the Red Sox to two runs on nine hits and one walk in 6 2/3 innings. He struck out six. He has allowed one walk or fewer in five consecutive starts.
Minor forced the Red Sox to strand men on base in the second, third, fourth and fifth innings. He got to two outs in the seventh but gave up back-to-back singles before Matheny called upon Scott Barlow for the final out of the inning.
“There were some at-bats there where I thought I made decent pitches and they still got hits,” Minor said. “I just had to battle around it and try to keep them on the bags. The defense made some good plays to where if they’d bobbled it or didn’t get it in time, then maybe those guys do score. So the defense did a good job behind me, too.”
Next up for the Royals is an off-day on Monday. They start a 10-game road trip Tuesday and won’t have another scheduled day off until the All-Star break (Monday, July 12).
This story was originally published June 20, 2021 at 4:56 PM.
