Kansas City Royals get blanked by Twins, setting up season-ending rubber match
Unfortunately for the Kansas City Royals, they couldn’t carry over any of the hits or runs from Friday night’s offensive outburst into Saturday’s game.
One night after their highest-scoring game since the All-Star break, the Royals were held to three hits in a 4-0 loss to the Minnesota Twins in front of an announced 22,321 at Kauffman Stadium on Saturday night. The Royals were shut out for the ninth time this year, the first time since August 24, at the Houston Astros.
The loss evened the series at one game apiece heading into Sunday afternoon’s season finale.
The Royals (74-87) had just two hits going into the ninth inning, and both came courtesy of backup catcher Cam Gallagher. Gallagher has stepped in behind the plate with Salvador Perez, who has a sprained ankle, serving as the designated hitter. Gallagher recorded his fourth consecutive multi-hit game.
Twins starting pitcher Griffin Jax (4-5) held the Royals to one hit and two walks in five innings. He struck out three. The Twins bullpen picked up where Jax left off and minimized the Royals offense.
Gallagher had the Royals’ only hits until Whit Merrifield lined a leadoff double down the left-field line in the ninth inning.
“He was using his breaking balls, both his curveball and his slider, throwing them for strikes,” Gallagher said of Jax. “Once he was getting ahead, he knew to expand with them. He had real tight spin on his breaking pitches today, kind of kept us a little bit off-balance. Tip your cap to him. He did a heck of a job today, but we’ll come back tomorrow. ”
Royals shortstop Nicky Lopez got thrown out trying to steal second base, which snapped his streak of 22 consecutive stolen bases without being caught. Before Satureay, Lopez had not been caught trying to steal all season. He tied Alcides Escobar’s franchise record for the most stolen bases in a season without having been thrown out, but would have broken the record with a successful steal.
Royals left-hander Kris Bubic gave up three runs, including one unearned run, in 6 2/3 innings to finish his second season and first full-length season in the majors.
“I felt good about it,” Bubic said of the outing. “Defense picked me up behind me and kind of like last week, me and Cam were in a good rhythm throughout. I’ve been in a pretty good place this last stretch especially.”
The Twins (72-89) scored in the first inning on Josh Donaldson’s two-out solo homer to take the lead. They added a run in the fourth after Lopez committed a fielding error with a man on second that left runners on the corners with one out. The next batter hit a sacrifice fly that made the score 2-0.
Bubic gave up another two-out run in the fifth when Byron Buxton lined a two-out double to left-center field, the 40th extra-base hit of the season for Buxton despite having played in just 60 games. Buxton then scored on a Mitch Garver RBI single.
“It was just one-run innings that stacked up on him,” Royals manager Mike Matheny said of Bubic’s outing. “One of them (because of) a play that wasn’t made that normally is. But we just had trouble building anything offensively. That really made it more lopsided than what it should have been. I thought he did a nice job. He was efficient every inning, figured out ways to use everything. It was, I think, a continuation of what we’ve seen his last several starts.”
Bubic (6-7) allowed two earned runs or fewer in each of his four starts.
Luis Arraez’s RBI single in the eighth also came with two outs, and that gave the Twins a 4-0 advantage.
The teams conclude the regular season on Sunday afternoon. First pitch is scheduled for 2:10 p.m. The pitching matchup will feature Royals rookie right-hander Jackson Kowar (0-5, 11.28 ERA) and Twins rookie left-hander Charlie Barnes (0-3, 5.86).
This story was originally published October 2, 2021 at 9:25 PM.
