Bats fail to support a quality start by Brad Keller as Kansas City Royals fall to Twins
.JPG "Minnesota’s Luis Arraez scores in the third inning as Kansas City Royals catcher Sebastian Rivero, left, looks on Sunday at Kauffman Stadium.")
The Royals got one of Brad Keller’s best starts of the season and couldn’t reward the effort.
Going for the series sweep against the Minnesota Twins, the Royals provided Keller no support at the plate and fell 6-2.
Keller went 6 1/3 innings, allowing five hits, and his seven strikeouts matched a season-best. He had struggled lately: His previous five starts produced four losses and a no-decision, and he’d allowed at least four earned runs in each contest.
Sunday was different.
“I felt like I went into attack mode today,” he said.
Keller departed Sunday’s game with the Royals trailing 2-0, making the performance a quality start — the first by a Royals starter in two weeks.
With a bullpen stretched thin lately, manager Mike Matheny needed all he could get from Keller.
“Mike came up to me and said, ‘We’re going to ride you this game,’” Keller said. “’You might be staying out there with 120 pitches but we’re going to need you.’
“It’s what you want as a starter. You want your team to jump on your back and go.”
By the time Keller departed, the Royals had mustered a pair of singles, back-to-back hits by Jarrod Dyson and Sebastian Rivero with two outs in the second inning.
Dyson drove in both Royals runs with a ninth-inning single, following a Ryan O’Hearn double and Hunter Dozier’s walk. Pinch-hitter Jorge Soler struck out to end the game.
O’Hearn also provided defense, making two excellent catches in right field. It was only his third appearance in right field since his debut in 2018, although he’s played the position with Class AAA Omaha.
“The more time you spend out there, seeing. the way the ball spins in batting practice then into the game, you get comfortable,” O’Hearn said.
The Royals entered the Minnesota series on a nine-game losing streak. But they won the first two games, scoring 13 runs on 22 hits. Entering Sunday they’d homered at least once in five of their previous six games.
But it was the Twins who brought the power Sunday. Keller surrendered a solo homer to Max Kepler in the sixth. Keller opened the seventh and with one out was replaced by Richard Lovelady.
In the series opener Friday, Lovelady pitched a pair of scoreless innings to log his first major-league victory. Sunday wasn’t as fun: Before the seventh inning had ended, he had given up a two-run homer to Jorge Polanco and a solo blast to Alex Kirilloff.
In his rookie season, Kirilloff is feasting off Royals pitching: Five of his seven home runs and 12 of his 28 RBIs have come against Kansas City.
After the Royals’ two second-inning singles, Twins starter Kenta Maeda set down the next 13 KC hitters before departing. The stretch went to 15 before Dozier legged out an infield single in the seventh off Jorge Alcala.
“He was pretty good,” Matheny said of Maeda. “He keeps you off-balance.”
The return of Andrew Benintendi didn’t help the Royals Sunday. He’d been out since fracturing a rib on June 13. The left fielder went back to his usual No. 2 spot in the batting order but was hitless in three plate appearances, including two strikeouts.
This story was originally published July 4, 2021 at 4:24 PM.