What we learned after the KC Royals and Twins had third straight 4-2 final
The KC Royals fell to the Twins on Sunday by a score of 4-2. This is the third straight time that these two finished with a 4-2 score.
On Saturday, the teams split a doubleheader with the Twins winning the first game and the Kansas City Royals winning the second. Both finals of that game were 4-2 and the final score on Sunday was 4-2 as well, with the Royals on the losing side of things.
This game started off promising, as the Royals got up to a 2-0 lead on a Hunter Dozier solo home run in the first inning and a solo bomb from Alex Gordon in the second inning. That would be it for the Royals offense though and the Twins would go on to put up four runs on the afternoon.
Brady Singer made start number five for the Royals, twirling more than five innings in a start for the first time in his career. He went 5.2 innings and surrendered three runs off of four hits while walking four and striking out two. The walks were a problem for Singer on Sunday and proved costly for the rookie.
Singer now has an ERA of 4.56 after five starts, but he has pitched better than that ERA would indicate. He’s going to make mistakes as a rookie, but for the most part, he’s been pretty dang good.
As mentioned above, the KC Royals offense didn’t do much.
Both runs were scored as a result of solo home runs and they both came in the first two innings off of starting pitcher Randy Dobnak. The Royals couldn’t do much else against Dobnak for the first of the afternoon and the Twins bullpen also silenced the KC bats.
The Royals managed just five hits and struck out seven times while walking just once against Minnesota’s pitching staff. Numbers like that aren’t going to result in runs unfortunately.
The bullpen was fine, but not as solid.
Greg Holland came in for Singer at the end of the sixth inning and only needed one pitch to get out of it. He had a bit of a tough time in the seventh inning, allowing one run on two hits and his ERA is now up to 3.09 as a result (still better than most of us figured it would be).
Scott Barlow was great once again, pitching a scoreless eighth inning and now boasting an ERA of 1.93. Barlow has been pretty dang clutch.
This is the third straight 4-2 final in this series, but it’s actually the fourth straight 4-2 final between these two teams.
If nothing else, this is just a fun fact that has no bearing on the game. It’s kind of crazy to think about though of all of the possible score combinations that this has been the final for the last four Royals/Twins games, dating back to last weekend.
The Royals and Twins play one more game in this series, which takes place on Monday, and then they’ll head home to the K to hopefully play the Reds.
Twenty-two games down, 38 to go!