



KANSAS CITY, MO. >> There are losses. And then there are excruciating losses.
The Twins have gotten all too familiar with the latter in recent weeks.
Against a division foe that has given him fits, Twins starter Bailey Ober turned in one of the best outings of his season. Ober rolled through the Royals, sending down 15 straight batters to finish his start. He was lifted after seven shutout innings and just 83 pitches in favor of a rested Jhoan Duran.
Duran struck out the first batter of the eighth inning, and then things started crumbling. The Royals, held to just one hit in the first seven innings, scored four runs in the eighth inning to beat the Twins 4-2 on Saturday night at Kauffman Stadium.
“When you are not able to find a way in those games and you can’t complete it, you can’t finish it, yeah, it’s going to frustrate everyone in the room,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “And it should.”
After Duran retired his first batter, the Twins (76-66) had a win probability of 89%. In mere minutes, that number plummeted. Duran allowed a single, hit a batter and then gave up another hit, which produced the Royals’ (78-65) first run of the night and knocked him out of the game.
The Twins, who came into the series leading the Royals in the standings, now trail them by 1 1/2 games.
“I know we need that game,” Duran said. “I feel bad right now.”
Griffin Jax was summoned to try to get a five-out save, but things continued to go sideways for the Twins.
Tommy Pham hit a soft groundball toward the left side of the infield. Sensing a potential collision with runner Dairon Blanco, third baseman Royce Lewis backed off. That left shortstop Brooks Lee to barehand the ball, which he threw off-balance past first baseman Kyle Farmer. Blanco scored the tying run on the play.
“I’m pretty sure that Royce had to move out of the way of the runner and the runner did not cede to Royce in any way. … Royce has to be able to make that play,” Baldelli said. “I think the umpires did not get that right. That’s the game. That is the difference in a two-run game, the call not being made on the field.”
Superstar Bobby Witt Jr. was next up, and after being held hitless in the series until that point, he delivered the go-ahead single to center. The Royals scored one more run in the inning, turning what looked as if it could be a nice win for the Twins into yet another disappointing loss.
It also meant Ober’s dominant start went for naught. Ober, who has historically been dominated by the Royals, stepped up when his team needed him in a game with big playoff positioning implications.
Ober and the Twins had been leading since the third inning when they broke through against starter Alec Marsh. Jose Miranda’s RBI triple and Matt Wallner’s double to bring Miranda home provided a pair of runs, but the Twins were held off the scoreboard by the Royals for the rest of the night.
And because the offense had been held off the board and the Twins had just a two-run lead, Ober didn’t have a chance to keep going.
He said after the seventh inning, he was thinking maybe he could have finished the game because of his low pitch count, and while he would have liked to have kept pitching, he said he was “totally fine” handing off the game, expressing his confidence in Duran and Jax.
But though the pair has been so good for the Twins all season, on Saturday night, the Royals broke through.
“Once you get into the eighth and ninth innings of games and you have exceptional relievers that you can bring into the game, that’s their job,” Baldelli said. “That’s their job to go out there and do it. … It’s going to bite us and it’s going to hurt and it’s going to feel crappy until we go out there and find a way to pull one out.”