Royals fight back, but couldn’t overcome mistakes in 6-5 loss to Twins

Close, but not close enough

The Kansas City Royals were down big, but kept the line moving to give Minnesota Twins fans some serious heartburn in a four-run ninth inning. Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite enough, as the Royals lose 6-5 in today’s Memorial Day game.

While the Royals have had really good starting pitching all year, they did not in this game, which was the biggest nail in their coffin today. Alec Marsh was the starter who made too many big mistakes. Last year, he struggled mightily with home runs, giving up a whopping 1.94 home runs per nine innings. This year, he only gave up 0.63 home runs per nine innings. But regression to the mean comes for us all, and Marsh allowed five runs on two homers.

Now, Marsh’s outing wasn’t all bad. He gutted through seven innings and struck out seven, walking only a pair. Unfortunately, the pair he walked came back-to-back as he lost all control—at one point, he had thrown six consecutive balls and had like seven strikes thrown across four batters. The last one of those batters was Trevor Larnach, who absolutely crushed a middle-middle fastball at 93 MPH for a three-run home run. It was the second of two multi-run home runs given up by Marsh, the first of which came off the bat of Jose Miranda in the third inning.

On the hitting side, the Royals fought valiantly against Joe Ryan, Kingkiller. Before coming into today, Ryan had a 1.52 ERA against the Royals in seven starts. That number will go down. He struck out nine Royals and walked none; they just could not get it done. In the first eight innings, Kansas City managed to push one run across the board on a Vinnie Pasquantino single.

Kansas City had the opportunity to do more, but after Vinnie singled, Ryan knew just how to do with Salvador Perez: just don’t throw him a strike. Perez struck out swinging and didn’t see a single pitch in the zone. He’s clearly been very good this year, but sometimes he just does Salvy things and you have to deal with it.

In hindsight, the eighth inning run the Twins scored against Nick Anderson and some poor Royals defense was huge. With two outs, Royals reliever Anderson coaxed a pair of softly hit tweener pop ups in the shallow outfield. But the Royals misplayed both; Witt didn’t make the catch because Adam Frazier didn’t heed his “I got it” call and nearly collided with the star. Later, MJ Melendez didn’t make a good break and had to sprint to make a sliding play which he couldn’t hold onto. That made it 6-1, Twins.

But lo and behold, the Royals clawed their way back. With one out, Salvy singled off Cole Sands. And with two outs, Frazier and Hunter Renfroe hit back-to-back hits, knocking out Sands and in place of the Twins closer, Jhoan Duran.

From there, it was Royals Devil Magic all the way. With a slumping Melendez back against the wall with two strikes, Duran hit him with a pitch. Blanco then hit a single with an exit velocity of barely 72 MPH to score Frazier. It loaded the bases. It was wild.

Then Garcia hit a ground ball with an exit velo of a whole 55 MPH for the Royals’ second consecutive infield single. Will Castro launched a throw over Alex Kirilloff’s head. Renfroe and Melendez scored. It was great.

Had the Royals not allowed a needless run to happen in the eighth, they would have tied the game there. Alas, they did, and they did not. Witt then grounded out to end the game. All told, Duran did exactly what he was supposed to—he got three instances of extremely weak ground ball contact. Some shenanigans happened, but that’s baseball for you.

The Royals end today at 34-21. If it feels like they haven’t won a game in Minnesota in forever, you would be correct; they’ve have now lost 15 of their last 18 games at Target Field. Tomorrow, though, they’ll get another chance.