KANSAS CITY, Mo. — When the Twins send Bailey Ober out to the mound, they usually have a pretty good sense of what they’re going to get from him. Most of the time this season, it’s been a quality start. That was the case in his seven starts heading into Saturday’s tilt against the Kansas City Royals.
But Ober, who has been the Twins’ most consistent starter this season, instead turned in an uncharacteristic performance on Saturday night. In his shortest start of the season (four innings), Ober gave up a season-high six runs on a season-high 11 hits.
It was that hole that the Twins spent the whole night trying to claw their way back from. And while they came close to tying the game, they never could quite recover and eventually fell 10-7 to the Royals at Kauffman Stadium.
“Probably the best that I’ve felt in a long, long time,” Ober said. “Execution was not where it needed to be today. I was missing out of the zone. Whenever I needed to go in the zone, I was missing over the plate, and obviously they were hitting it pretty well and putting balls where we weren’t today.”
Ober, who gave up a solo home run to Bobby Witt Jr. in the first inning, allowed another three runs in the second and two more in the third. Without his best command, it was a slog just getting through his four innings.
Things weren’t much better for the rest of the pitching staff. The Twins (54-52) gave up 18 hits in the loss.
“Normally he’s able to evade the barrels like that,” manager Rocco Baldelli said of Ober. “But they came and they stuck around, even when we went to our bullpen. We had a tough time slowing them down.”
After Ober’s departure, though, his teammates did string some quality at-bats together to get themselves back in the game. The Twins cut the lead in half in the fourth inning, using a Jorge Polanco RBI groundout and Byron Buxton’s first of three doubles, which brought home a pair of runs.
“Mentally, I just feel like I’m in a better spot,” said Buxton, who returned Friday from the paternity list.
Two innings later, Max Kepler hit his 15th home run of the season, and catcher Christian Vázquez singled in another run to bring the Twins within one run of the Royals (31-75).
The inning ended when second baseman Michael Massey made a nice play on a Carlos Correa groundball to start a double play and end the threat. The Twins saw an earlier inning end on another nice defensive play by the Royals when Kepler was thrown out at the plate by left fielder M.J. Melendez, trying to score on what would have been a sacrifice fly.
The Twins challenged, wanting to the umpires to take a look to see if catcher Salvador Perez had committed a plate blocking violation. But the call was not overturned.
“We didn’t lose the game today just based on that play,” Baldelli said. “But you are not sure, truthfully, the way that it’s going to get ruled, and we’re not alone.”
Even after Royals tacked on against the Twins’ ‘pen — Jordan Balazovic gave up a run, Jovani Moran two and Josh Winder one — the Twins fought back, adding two runs in the eighth.
But they ran themselves out of a good opportunity in that inning — they would have had the tying run in the form of Edouard Julien at the plate — when Willi Castro aggressively tried to make third on a Correa single and was thrown out.
“Normally, if we’re putting up that up that many runs, we’ll be OK. But there were a lot of things in this game that we didn’t do real well,” Baldelli said. “Shooting ourselves in the foot and things like that. … Every team is going to make mistakes and things aren’t going to go smoothly. But overall, that was a hard one to watch, because as we get closer, the game seemed to get a little further away every time we got closer.”
The Link LonkJuly 30, 2023 at 09:33AM
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Bailey Ober hit hard in Twins’ loss to Royals - St. Paul Pioneer Press
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