What we learned after Kansas City Royals scored four runs in first inning
The Kansas City Royals moved to 11-15 on the year after beating the Twins 7-2 on Friday night.
The blowout win was jumpstarted by a four run first inning that put the Kansas City Royals up 4-0 before the Twins even came up to bat. They hit Jake Odorizzi hard and never looked back, getting seven hits off of him and five runs through three innings of work.
Sometimes this Royals offense is up and sometimes it’s down, but on Friday, it was definitely clicking. Ryan O’Hearn and Bubba Starling were the only two in the starting lineup not to have a hit while Whit Merrifield went 2-for-3 with a walk.
The offense was obviously fantastic, but the pitching did their part too and Danny Duffy deserves a huge round of applause for his performance. Duffy went five innings allowing just one run on four hits while walking two and striking out six. He was electric and now has an ERA of 3.99 to show for his efforts this season.
The bullpen did well too, surrendering just one more run on the evening, which came off of Kyle Zimmer in the eighth inning. Zimmer still struck out two batters and has a sparkly ERA of 1.80, so it’s hard to be too angry that he gave up one run in a blowout win.
It should come as no surprise to anyone, but Josh Staumont pitched in this game and had yet another awesome outing. He struck out two and walked one and now has an ERA of 0.79. He’s on his way to superstardom for sure.
This was an all around great win by the Kansas City Royals.
Everything was clicking for the boys in blue in game number 26. The offense put up seven runs, Duffy went five innings and gave up just one run in the process, and the bullpen once again did their part and kept the lead preserved for the Royals.
This is the third straight week the Royals have faced the Twins and while they lost last weekend’s series, they swept them the weekend prior. It’s been a competitive season series between these two and even though the Royals took game one of this series, there are still two games left before the team heads to St. Louis for a three-game series.
Twenty-six games down, 34 games to go!