Last place Royals tune up Twins with 18-hit attack
Make it four straight losses for the Minnesota Twins after they were thumped by the Royals 10-7 Saturday night in Kansas City.
The Royals pounded out 18 hits and led from start to finish, putting up six runs on nine hits in the first three innings against Bailey Ober, who allowed two more hits in the fourth inning before being removed from the game. Minnesota's bullpen wasn't much better as it surrendered four runs and seven more hits over the final five innings.
Bobby Witt Jr., who went 4-for-5 and hit a walk-off grand slam to beat the Twins in 10 innings on Friday night, again went 4-for-5 with a homer and three RBI. Kyle Isbel also had four hits for the Royals.
Minnesota racked up 11 hits as a team, including a nice night for Byron Buxton in his first full game back after missing Monday-Thursday on paternity leave. Buxton had a sharp single in his pinch-hit at-bat Friday night and he went 3-for-3 with three doubles on Saturday night.
Max Kepler went 2-for-4 with a double and his 15th homer of the season.
Cleveland lost to the White Sox so despite four straight losses the Twins (54-52) still lead the AL Central by 1.5 games over the Guardians (52-53).
Up next: Twins at Royals, 1:10 p.m. Sunday.
Title: Bring Me The Sports co-owner, editor Email: joe@bringmethenews.com Twitter: @JoeBMTN Education: Southwest Minnesota State University Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota Expertise: All things Minnesota sports Nelson has covered Minnesota sports for two decades, starting his media career in sports radio. He worked at small market Minnesota stations in Marshall and St. Cloud before joining one of the nation's highest-rated sports stations, KFAN-FM 100.3 in the Twin Cities. There, he was the producer of the top-rated mid-morning sports show with Minnesota Vikings announcer Paul Allen. His radio experience helped blossom a career as a sports writer, joining Minneapolis-based Bring Me The News in 2011. Nelson and Adam Uren became co-owners of Bring Me The News in 2018 and have since more than tripled the site's traffic and launched Bring Me The Sports in cooperation with the Sports Illustrated/FanNation umbrella. Nelson has covered the Super Bowl and numerous training camps, NFL combines, the MLB All-Star Game and Minnesota playoff games, in addition to the day-to-day happenings on and off the field of play. Nelson also has extensive knowledge of non-sports subjects, including news and weather. He works closely with Bring Me The News meteorologist Sven Sundgaard to produce a bevy of weather and climate information for Minnesota readers. Nelson helped launch and manage the Bring Me The News Radio Network, which provided more than 50 radio stations around Minnesota with daily news, sports and weather reports from 2011-17.