Royals Offense Sputters in 4-1 Loss to Twins

Things are really getting weird when your local sports columnist pens an advice column on how to cope with being a fan of a baseball team that doesn’t stink.That advice might come in handy for younger Royals fans on the march to glory, but won’t help much after Saturday’s game as the march was rudely interrupted with a pungent 4-1 loss to the greedy Minnesota Twins (go jump in one of your 10,000 lakes…jerks). So much for Minnesota hospitality.

Yordano Ventura (9-9, 3.48 ERA, 1.31 WHIP) started for the Royals and held the Twins in check for six innings, despite struggling through an uneven outing. He finished with a line of four hits, six walks, three strikeouts and three earned runs surrendered in 6&2/3rds innings.

Yordano’s demise came in the seventh. Clinging to a 1-0 lead, he gave up a single followed by a bunt single, then a sac bunt to move the runners into scoring position. The next hitter grounded to 1B Billy Butler, whose throw home beat the runner Kurt Suzuki, but Kurt executed a nifty slide and eluded the tag from Sal Perez, scoring the tying run. The next batter — Brian Dozier — doubled in the go-ahead run. Another run scored on a sac fly, before Francisley Bueno relieved Yordano and recorded the final out of the inning.

Yordano’s Twins counterpart — Phil Hughes (13-8, 3.76 ERA, 1.21 WHIP) — took the opposite approach. He didn’t walk any Royals enroute to victory, as he gave up seven hits and just one run in 7 & 1/3 solid innings.

The Royals offense was feeble tonight. They could muster but seven singles and one lonely double (Nori Aoki) all night long. Pitiful.

But take heart, Royals fans. Wins tomorrow and Monday will still make it eight straight series victories. It’s JGuts (Jeremy Guthrie) for the Royals vs. some other guy for the Twins tomorrow. Serve some up cold, boys.

Here’s a song that describes what I want the Royals offense to do to Target Field tomorrow afternoon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcClvRt9g2Q