KANSAS CITY -- The second half has started to show some cracks in the Twins’ starting rotation, the bedrock of their success for much of the season. This series, even the most steadfast elements of the pitching staff have faltered.
A day after bullpen ace Jhoan Duran allowed a walk-off grand slam, the extremely consistent Bailey Ober was uncharacteristically hittable on Saturday, allowing a career-high six runs and 11 hits to a struggling Kansas City lineup that claimed its first series victory in nearly a month by sending the Twins to a 10-7 loss at Kauffman Stadium.
Amid this four-game losing streak, the pendulum of the Twins’ first half -- strong pitching, inconsistent hitting -- has swung over to the other side, with 35 runs allowed in those four games, including 18 in two games against the Royals, while the offense has put up more robust run totals.
“It does feel slightly on the drastic end of the swings, like you’re saying,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “It does feel like that right now, but the reason it feels like that is because we didn't win. When you win, you can find ways to look at [it as] the glass is half full, and when you don’t, you look at it as some sort of issue to resolve.”
This was, indeed, quite the drastic result, as Kansas City’s 18 hits marked both the most this season by the Royals’ lineup and the most allowed by the Twins’ pitching staff -- and it began with a start unlike any Ober has put forth for the Twins.
Though Ober described his pregame bullpen as the best he’s had “in a long time” and felt he wielded some of the best stuff he’s had this season, with his fastball velocity up nearly half a mile per hour, he struggled with execution in the game, missing out of the zone too often and catching too much of the plate when he got back into the zone.
An early homer from a red-hot Bobby Witt Jr. in the first inning gave way to a three-run second inning featuring a homer and three singles, again capped by an RBI knock by Witt, who had four hits for a second straight game and fell a double shy of the cycle.
“I don't really want to talk about Bobby Witt Jr.,” Baldelli said. “I've seen enough of Bobby Witt Jr. for this season. He's a good player. He's doing a real good job for them right now.”
The Royals continued with a two-run third fueled by three singles and a double, and it took a 10-pitch strikeout with two men on in the fourth inning for Ober to finally complete his 90-pitch outing, which snapped a streak of seven consecutive starts in which he’d completed six innings, and 10 in a row in which he’d allowed three or fewer earned runs.
Ober had allowed more than three runs only twice in 16 starts entering Saturday night, making this a blip that he’s already looking to put behind him.
“Every other pitch from there on out, all the hits, it seemed like, were executed OK,” Ober said. “Maybe some of them were over the middle of the plate, but they were pitches we needed to make.”
Even as the Twins’ offense rode a three-double game from the newly activated Byron Buxton, the first such game of his career, and two more extra-base hits from Max Kepler, the Royals just kept putting more and more distance between themselves and the Minnesota comeback in a game the Twins hope to soon forget.
The loss marked the Twins’ fourth straight game allowing eight or more runs, and the starting rotation has had a few rough turns to begin the second half, with Minnesota’s rotation having posted a 5.38 ERA (49 earned runs in 82 innings) in those 15 games.
Sonny Gray (5.09 ERA), Pablo López (5.60) and Joe Ryan (6.60) have all run into roadblocks in a small sample size, and while the Twins will seek relief help by Tuesday’s Trade Deadline, their rotation has been the foundation of their success -- and they’ll have to keep relying on it down the stretch.
“Every team is going to make mistakes, and things aren't going to go smoothly,” Baldelli said. “But overall, that was a hard one to watch. Because as we got closer, the game seemed to get a little further away.”