Nothing the Royals could do today could penetrate a very solid pitching performance from Minnesota’s starting pitcher, Livan Hernandez. The Royals were not able to capitalize on a bases loaded, one-out 5th inning, where they were then turned away in front of 16,691 “crazy” Royals fans. I say crazy for the fact that at gametime the temperature was about 40 degrees in the warm spots, and approximately 30 in the cold spots (wind chill, of course).
The Royals starting pitching took some lumps today as Meche gave up 5 runs on just 5 hits. However, he ended up walking 4 and gave up a HR to Morneau. The positive for Meche’s afternoon is that he did have 6 K’s, and after he settled down, starting in the 4th inning, he pitched very good baseball for the remainder of his day. He was relieved by Japanese phenom, Yasuhiko Yabuta, who shut out the Twins for the 2 innings he pitched, keeping his ERA perfect at 0.00. Ramirez came in and also recorded a scoreless inning to wrap this cold day up.
It was one of those games that the Royals would like to forget. Everything they did was wrong. Any adjustment they made was wrong. This is the second time that the Twins have played spoiler to the Royals, as Kansas City met them in Minnesota, after a shockingly victorious sweep of the Detroit Tigers, the Twins handed the Royals their first lose of the season, followed by their second lose. Now coming off another solid series with a major league powerhouse in the Yankees, the Twins have shut them out. Three of the Four loses the Royals have this season are at the hands of the Twins.
This loss did not, however, knock them out of first place, as they are still the leaders in the AL Central. Tomorrow is another day, and Tomko(1-0) takes the mound against Bonser (0-2) to put a stop to the Twins’ winning ways against these hot Royals. Their record stands now at 6-4, after this 0-5 lose today to the Twins.