MINNEAPOLIS -- Healthy, but still not right.
That was the verdict on Joe Ryan, who followed one of the worst starts of his career with a so-so outing on Wednesday night as the Twins lost to the Royals, 4-0, at Target Field.
He lasted six innings, struck out four and didn’t issue a walk, but Ryan was reached for all four Kansas City runs among eight base hits. He probably should have allowed one fewer run with some cleaner defense behind him, but it was not the kind of game that Ryan was looking for.
“Started out feeling a little better. Probably the adrenaline felt good,” Ryan said. “Tried to settle in, certain things are a little bit off still, so trying to figure it out. Arm felt good, so that was good. But yeah, not putting the ball where I want to. Didn’t have the extra life that I was looking for today. So [it's] frustrating.”
It’s been a strange couple of weeks for Ryan, who went into the All-Star break on a roll and pitched a fine inning at the Midsummer Classic in Philadelphia, but hasn’t been sharp since.
Ryan allowed a club-record-tying six home runs in his previous start, nine days earlier against Cleveland, coming out of the break. Then he was bumped from his next scheduled start this past weekend due to what the club called arm fatigue.
So eyes were on the Twins’ star right-hander when he took the mound against a Kansas City team that he has historically owned. And the results were … mixed, though Ryan did say that he’s healthy.
“He left some balls in the middle of the plate,” said manager Derek Shelton. “The one inning he was able to get out of it, the first and third, but after that [he] just left some balls in the middle, and they capitalized.”
Ryan came out looking like his vintage self, beginning the game with a pair of strikeouts and touching 95.7 mph in the first inning. But he allowed a baserunner in every subsequent inning, ultimately permitting four runs on eight hits.
By the fifth, Ryan's fastball dipped to 91-92 mph, and he began leaning much more heavily on his offspeed pitches.
“Just kind of battling some things,” he said. “Just trying to figure out how I can get right. I think it just kind of lingered from, just tried to figure some stuff out in Chicago after the break. … Certain things didn’t go as planned, let's say, and just trying to play catch-up a little bit.”
For most pitchers, back-to-back subpar starts is a frustration, but given the level at which Ryan has pitched over the past two seasons, the struggles have him perplexed. He said that his arm felt good and described the point of contention as “balance and lower-half stuff.” But it’s been quite some time since he felt he was searching the way he is right now.
“It's been a while,” he said. “Just got to keep digging and trying to figure it out. I kind of know what's going on. It's not like a scary thing by any means. I'm not concealing anything. It's just something frustrating.”