Kansas City Royals beat Minnesota Twins to take series, complete a winning road trip
Kansas City Royals outfielder Kyle Isbel, who was recalled to the majors before Sunday’s game, drove in the go-ahead run to break a tie and set his club on course for a series-clinching victory with two outs in the eighth inning.
Isbel drove in what ended up being the winning run and the Royals added another in the ninth as they beat the Minnesota Twins 5-3 on Sunday in front of an announced 19,496 at Target Field in Minneapolis.
The Royals (65-78) took the three-game set and finished their road trip 4-3.
Royals All-Star second baseman Whit Merrifield went 3 for 5, smacked two doubles, scored twice and drove in a run.
“We’re obviously, at this point, not playing for a playoff spot, but it’s important for this team to understand how to win games,” Merrifield said. “That’s a real thing. It’s a real skill and sort of mentality that teams have to figure out and have to expect to win a third game of a series when it’s 1-1.”
Andrew Benintendi had two hits and registered his 14th RBI of the road trip. Benintendi tied the club record for the most RBIs on any trip of seven games or fewer. The others to accomplish the feat were Jeff King, who did it in seven games in 1997, and Kendrys Morales, who needed just six games in 2016.
On Monday, Benintendi was chosen American League player of the week.
Adalberto Mondesi hit his sixth home run of the season and snapped an 0-for-17 slump.
Royals starting pitcher Kris Bubic allowed three runs (two earned) on four hits and one walk in 5 1/3 innings. He struck out six, three on called third strikes.
“We had a pretty good game plan coming in,” Bubic said. “I’ve faced these guys a number of times now to where you kind of know what gets them and what doesn’t. But I thought we did a really good job of commanding both sides of the plate with the fastball. Stacking the righties in there like that, I’ve seen it a bunch. If I can get that fastball command down, it helps the changeup play. The curveball, I thought, was better today.”
Merrifield set the table for the day’s first run with a leadoff double to the wall in left-center field. He advanced on third on Lopez’s infield single, and then he scored on a Sal Perez sacrifice fly.
After the Twins (63-80) tied the score in the bottom of the first on Luis Arraez’s sacrifice fly, Mondesi gave the Royals a 2-1 edge in the second inning. Mondesi smashed a 3-2 fastball 403 to right field for his sixth homer of the season.
The Royals added to that lead in the fifth inning on Merrifield’s second double of the game, a lopping liner down the right-field line that scored Ryan O’Hearn from second base. O’Hearn singled to start the inning.
The Twins had just three hitters reach base in the first five innings against Bubic, including leadoff hitter Byron Buxton. Buxton reached twice in that span, and he started off the sixth inning with a single.
However, the Twins evened the score in the sixth inning after Bubic allowed three of the first four batters of the inning to reach and load the bases with one out. Bubic’s only walk came in the sixth inning.
Reliever Domingo Tapia took over for Bubic with the bases loaded, retired the first batter he faced and then gave up a two-run double that tied the score 3-3.
Isbel’s two-out RBI single into right field in the eighth inning broke the tie.
The Twins put two men on with one out in the bottom of the eighth on a fielding error by Mondesi and a walk. But reliever Josh Staumont induced Miguel Sano to hit into an inning-ending double play on a grounder to shortstop Nicky Lopez and turned by Merrifield.
“Josh was throwing the ball well,” Royals manager Mike Matheny said. “The curveball was looking good, you could tell from his very first pitch. He had good velocity. But we needed some help right there. Getting the guys to turn the good double play right there was definitely a rally killer.”
Benintendi’s sacrifice fly in the ninth added an insurance run.
Scott Barlow pitched around a one-out single in the ninth to earn his 12th save of the season.
“Take a lump like we did (Saturday) night when we didn’t look at all like how we normally play and what we expect to look like, and then to be able to come back the next morning, early, and put something together (was encouraging),” Matheny said.
“Kris gave us a great start. He threw so well. He had everything going from the beginning. He established the fastball, did a great job of pounding it in there. He and (catcher) Sebastian Rivero had a nice job too. They were working together. Making the fastball good, that made everything else better.”
The Royals have a day off on Monday before beginning a three-game series with the Oakland Athletics at Kauffman Stadium on Tuesday night.
This story was originally published September 12, 2021 at 5:11 PM.
