Kansas City Royals shut out by Twins as offense can’t help Zack Greinke, bullpen
The latest lineup shakeup for the Kansas City Royals wasn’t enough to jolt any offense in the final game of their homestand.
Unfortunately for veteran ace Zack Greinke, it also meant a strong pitching performance got wasted.
The Royals were shut out for the first time this season Thursday afternoon during a 1-0 loss to the Minnesota Twins in front of an announced 15,540 in the finale of a three-game series at Kauffman Stadium.
The tying run was in scoring position when the game ended.
The loss snapped a three-game win streak for the Royals, who begin a six-game, seven-day road trip on Friday night in Seattle.
The Royals (5-6) had clinched the series with Wednesday night’s win, but the Twins (5-8) avoided being swept.
“First, the message is: Good series win. That’s the takeaway right now at this point,” Royals manager Mike Matheny said. “Then it’s the obvious. We need to get our offense going.
“We can’t continue to throw shutouts every single night, and the guys know that. We’re going to have to do the little things right. We’re going to have to get big hits. That’s just common sense. They’re doing the proper work and preparation to give us every chance. It’s going to happen. It’ll break out. Right now, we’re just in one of those spots.”
Greinke (0-1) allowed one run, six hits and one walk in five innings. He struck out one and didn’t give up an extra-base hit.
Meanwhile, the Royals’ bullpen extended its scoreless streak to 21 1/3 consecutive innings. Gabe Speier (one inning), Taylor Clarke (two innings) and Dylan Coleman (one inning) pitched Thursday.
Andrew Benintendi went 1 for 4 with a triple, and Bobby Witt Jr. went 1 for 2 with a walk and a double for the Royals, who had just three hits in the game. Michael A. Taylor (1 for 2, walk) had the only other hit.
“Just a really good start by Zack, limiting the damage to just the one run,” Matheny said. “I always believe that’s going to be enough. If we can keep them there, our offense is going to get things going. We just didn’t have a lot of opportunities.”
The first two Twins batters of the second inning reached base against Greinke via a Gio Urshela leadoff walk and a Max Kepler single. They made that opportunity count when Miguel Sano hit a sacrifice fly to center field that allowed Urshela to score without a play at the plate.
Greinke didn’t allow another runner into scoring position until the fifth inning, and he stranded two men on base in that frame.
“I got better as the game went on again,” Greinke said. “It’s happened the last two outings. Hopefully, I’ll keep getting better. It’s just tough conditions to hit, which has been a lot of the case so far this year for the team. It’s just been cold, wind has been blowing in a lot. It probably helped me today, made it a little tougher for us to score.”
Limited scoring chances and ‘bad breaks’
The Royals threatened in the fourth inning when Benintendi hit a one-out triple into the right field corner.
As he initially came out of the batter’s box, he thought the ball would clear the wall for a home run. But he reacted quickly enough upon realizing that it wouldn’t clear the fence to still end up at third base.
“I’m sure you could see from my reaction, I thought there was no question that that was going to be a homer,” Benintendi said. “It is what it is. It’s a big yard with a lot of wind. It’s unfortunate.”
Benintendi’s blast came off the bat with an exit velocity of 104 mph and traveled 389 feet.
“That ball should be a home run, just about any place, any day,” Matheny said.
The next batter, Salvador Perez, flew out to Twins center fielder Nick Gordon. Benintendi attempted to tag up and score from third, but Gordon’s throw to the plate was strong, accurate and in time.
The wind blowing in also took some of the steam off the ball Perez hit to center and made it a more manageable throw for Gordon.
“It looked like the wind brought it back probably a good 20 yards at least,” Benintendi said. “So it’s just a couple bad breaks today.”
Matheny expressed absolute agreement with the decision of third base coach Vance Wilson to send Benintendi on the play with one out in a one-run game.
“You’ve got to send him,” Matheny said. “You’ve got to take a shot. They made a good throw.”
The Royals didn’t put another runner in scoring position until Witt hit a two-out double in the eighth inning. However, Adalberto Mondesi hit an inning-ending fly ball to right field.
Recent history didn’t repeat itself
In the ninth, Taylor drew a leadoff walk to give the Royals one last opening to potentially score the tying run.
Nicky Lopez, who’d been moved up from the ninth spot in the batting order this week, popped up a bunt attempt against Twins relief pitcher Emilio Pagan.
Lopez, who has batted .391 in his career on bunt attempts and has reached base or moved the runner over 48 percent of the time, acknowledged after the game that he was bunting on his own and it was not a call from the bench.
“I mean, everyone knew I was probably going to bunt there,” Lopez said. “It’s what I do. I just popped it up. More times than not, I’m not popping it up. But the guy has pretty good vert on his fastball and I just got a little bit underneath it.”
In the Royals season-opening win two weeks earlier, Lopez set up the game-winning RBI with an eighth-inning bunt to move Taylor into scoring position. Witt drove him in with a double two batters later.
Lopez stood by his decision to bunt instead of swinging away, and he said he’d make the same decision again.
“The only other thing is if I was given a hit-and-run,” Lopez said. “Other than that, I’m putting that bunt down and I’m successfully doing it. More times than not, I’m not popping it up. It’s just sometimes, that’s baseball man. It gets away from you. Sometimes you get a little bit underneath it, and I did.”
This story was originally published April 21, 2022 at 4:06 PM.
