Written By Tom Schreier (ColdOmaha.com)
The Minnesota Twins had 12 hits against the Kansas City Royals on Monday night, but K.C. topped them with 17 and Minnesota fell 10-4, dropping their record to 11-32.
Ricky Nolasco only went 2.2 innings, giving up eight hits and six earned runs. Kansas City starter Ian Kennedy didn’t fare much better, going 3.1, but gave up five hits and two earned runs.
“We dug ourselves a hole, and Ricky’s had some decent starts along the way here — I’m not sure if he’s up to eight or nine starts, but tonight wasn’t his best,” said manager Paul Molitor.
“Just struggling with his command, his breaking ball was kinda lingering over the heart of the plate a little bit. A lot of their hits seemed to be on off-speed pitches.”
The game went into a rain delay with no outs in the bottom of the third inning. It lasted 41 minutes, and both Twins reliever Trevor May and Kennedy pitched after it.
“It was close, but by the time they give us a resumption time, we were only at a half an hour,” said Molitor in reference to May. “We were on the offensive end of the resumption of play, so he got a chance to get out there.”
May gave up 4 hits and two earned runs in 1.1 innings. Taylor Rogers, Brandon Kintzler, Fernando Abad and Kevin Jepsen all pitched in relief. Jepsen gave up two additional earned runs to bring the Royals total to 10.
“It was maybe 30-35 minutes, which is tolerable considering he hadn’t thrown very many pitches in the inning completed prior,” Molitor added. “We were just gonna try to get one more out of him if we could.”
Miguel Sano drew some ire from Molitor when he misplayed a fly ball at the wall and didn’t go after it once it had ricocheted into the field.
“I think maybe he assumed that [Eduardo] Nunez or Danny [Santana] were gonna be in even better position to recover after he got himself too close to the wall to make the catch,” said Molitor, adding that Sano is not as comfortable around the wall and is better moving forward than backwards.
“But yeah, you want to go for the ball, even if you think someone else might be there to help you out. Sometimes you get caught assuming out there, and it doesn’t look too good.”
In general it was another tough loss. Minnesota is now 7-14 at home and 4-18 against the AL Central.
“We just tried to get through that game after you got behind. You think maybe you can peck your way back into it. We held them off there for a while, but we couldn’t put up any crooked numbers, left some guys on base (nine),” said Molitor.
“Overall just not a very good game for us.”