Kansas City Royals: What we learned in final game against Twins
The Kansas City Royals faced the Minnesota Twins for the final time this season.
It feels like the only team the Kansas City Royals have faced this year is the Minnesota Twins and that’s because they’ve faced them three straight weekends. Now the two are done seeing each other for the rest of the 2020 season, with the series finishing at 5-5.
In the final game between these two teams, the Royals had their fair share of opportunities to take things, but a rough outing from Kris Bubic was too much for the team to overcome.
Bubic was making his fifth start and struggled mightily in this one, allowing four runs off of nine hits through just 3.1 innings of work. It definitely wasn’t a good outing from the rookie and he was throwing a lot of pitches in each inning, something he’s going to have to work on if he wants to make it in the big leagues.
The Kansas City Royals had a chance to make things happen though.
What a bad day for Trevor Rosenthal to allow a run, huh? Were it not for that run in the ninth inning, the Royals would have tied things up in the bottom of the inning rather than trailing by a run. From there, it’s a whole different ball game.
Rosenthal was the only Royals reliever to give up a run, as Tyler Zuber, Greg Holland, Jesse Hahn, and Scott Barlow did their part.
The loss obviously doesn’t fall on Rosenthal though, as the offense didn’t do their job.
Four runs might have crossed the plate for the boys in blue, but they left 11 players on base and failed to capitalize when they did manage to get runners in scoring position. Hunter Dozier was great, getting on base five times, so that was good to see.
The team fell into a 4-0 hole, but didn’t roll over and die. They made it 4-2 and eventually 4-3 before Rosenthal allowed that home run in the ninth inning. It’s a shame that the Royals couldn’t get this series victory, but at the same time, they went 5-5 against the Twins, a team who have 19 wins on the year and will likely win the division.
Next up for the Kansas City Royals is a three-game series against the team located on the other side of the state, the St. Louis Cardinals. These two teams don’t have much of a rivalry (or if they do, it’s one-sided), but it’d be nice to take this series from the other Missouri team.
Twenty-eight games down, 32 to go!