Twins' road trip ends with a whimper in 5-0 loss to Mariners

SEATTLE – Even their best road trips end badly for the Twins.

The Twins won five times in Oakland and Seattle, their most victories on a single trip in more than a year. But the Twins never managed more than one hit in any inning Thursday, and fell to 1-6 this season in road-trip finales with a 5-0 loss to the Mariners at T-Mobile Park.

More disheartening was the way they lost: A team that had averaged seven runs per game on this journey, that believed it was working out of its season-long scoring slump, suddenly reverted to its scuffling-for-runs identity, held to fewer than six hits for the 26th time this year and without a run for the seventh.

Of course, George Kirby had something to do with it, too. The second-year Seattle righthander lived up to his All-Star pedigree by failing to walk a batter for the ninth time in 19 starts, dropping his MLB-best walks-per-nine-innings rate to 0.83 for the season.

"He just doesn't throw balls," Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. "He threw a lot of quality strikes, I'll tell you that. We knew he was [a] hard-throwing strike-thrower. Throws fastballs that do different things and just attacks the zone real well."

Kirby limited the Twins to three singles, all by rookies Matt Wallner (two) and Edouard Julien (one), and a Kyle Farmer triple over seven innings. He also struck out a career-high 10, becoming, along with Wednesday's starter Luis Castillo, the first Seattle pitchers to reach double-digit strikeouts in back-to-back games since 2015.

"He's a good arm. They have a lot of good arms, and we had a chance to see that this series," Baldelli said of Kirby, who outpitched fellow All-Star Pablo López, who gave up two runs on six hits over five innings. "Today, we just couldn't get anything going like we have in prior games."

That's true, though there were some usual culprits, too. Joey Gallo's difficult July continued with an 0-for-3, the fifth time he was held hitless on this seven-game trip. Gallo has four hits, albeit three of them home runs, in 34 July at-bats, a .118 average that includes 20 strikeouts.

Christian Vázquez's 0-for-2 means he is 4-for-36 (.111) since June 27. And Byron Buxton, returning after two days out of the lineup, struck out to end the game, finishing an 0-for-4 day that extended his hitless streak to 26 consecutive at-bats, and 1-for-35 since July 5.

Buxton "took some swings that did look different today than the swings we had been seeing," Baldelli said. "He's going to keep working. It's a long season, and it's a grind. It feels tough right now because we're at a point where it's not going well. But that's life."

And the hitters didn't even have the toughest day among the Twins.

Jorge López retired Julio Rodríguez to end the seventh inning. But he lost all semblance of control in the eighth.

After surrendering a leadoff single to Eugenio Suárez, López left a slider over the middle of the strike zone. Mike Ford hammered it to right field, the ball striking the windows of the restaurant on the stadium's second deck.

López reacted visibly to the homer, and proceeded to unravel. The righthander, who spent two weeks of June on the injured list for mental health reasons, hit three of the next five hitters with pitches, including batters on both sides of the plate, to load the bases. Cole Sands was summoned to relieve López and threw a wild pitch to score the game's final run.

"Just hanging a pitch and I get a homer. So yeah, I should be a better pitcher than that," Jorge López said. "I just lost that pitch, and I lost it with the hitters."

Which can't happen, Baldelli said.

"More than the results, being able to stay composed and being able to regroup when things aren't going well, that should be more of a focus. He knows that's more of a focus than even if you give up a run or two," Baldelli said. "He just went out there and it didn't go in the direction he wanted it to, and he didn't regroup fast enough or well enough."