KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Royals lineup collected five hits Saturday, scoring only one run. The team's pitching staff piled up four hits, too — four Twins hit by pitches — and it cost Kansas City the game.
Ryan Jeffers was nicked by a Will Smith pitch in the ninth inning, and after Smith walked Willi Castro, Christian Vázquez lined a single to left field, breaking a tie and setting off a big inning that resulted in a 5-1 victory over the Royals at Kauffman Stadium.
Byron Buxton doubled twice, the first one driving in the game-tying run in the eighth inning, and the second one bringing home two more runs in the ninth.
For Vázquez, driving in Jeffers was a nice way to forget about his seemingly disastrous at-bat in the seventh, while the Twins still trailed 1-0. Royals reliever John Schreiber had loaded the bases by hitting Matt Wallner and Willi Castro with pitches, with a Carlos Santana single in between.
But Schreiber escaped the jam by forcing Vázquez to hit a ground ball directly at second base, which Adam Frazier turned into an easy inning-ending double play.
Joe Ryan enjoyed a blissfully quiet start to the season, retiring the first 10 hitters he faced and allowing only three hits and one walk. Two of the hits were doubles by Bobby Witt Jr., however, and while he successfully pitched around the first one, he wasn't given a chance to do it again.
BOXSCORE: Twins 5, Kansas City 1
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Witt's one-out double in the sixth inning ended Ryan's day, with former Miami Marlin Steven Okert making his Twins debut. Okert, a lefthander, retired Vinnie Pasquantino on a popup, then intentionally walked Salvador Perez, the active leader in home runs against the Twins.
MJ Melendez then hit a routine ground ball to shortstop — except Carlos Correa wasn't there, having been shifted behind second base. The ball rolled untouched into the outfield, Witt raced home, and Ryan was suddenly facing a potential 1-0 loss, which would have been the Twins' first such loss to the Royals since 2012.
Buxton made sure it didn't happen. After Edouard Julien led off the eighth inning with an opposite-field double, Buxton hit a high chopper that bounded over third baseman Maikel Garcia's head and into left field. By the time Melendez could race over to retrieve it, Buxton was on second base and Julien had tied the score.
Four more runs in the ninth, a rally set off by Jeffers' controversial hit-by-pitch — the Royals challenged the call, but a replay could not determine whether the ball had made contact with Jeffers or his uniform — put the game out of reach. It was the fourth time the Twins had ever been hit by four pitches in a game, the others coming in 1995 in Cleveland, 1971 in Kansas City and 1970 at Metropolitan Stadium against the Chicago White Sox.
