Twins fall to Royals in 11 innings after lengthy delays

KANSAS CITY, MO. – Not a deluge, power outage, swarm of locusts or a runaway rhino was going to stop the Twins and Royals from getting their game in on Friday.

O.K., the last two didn't happen. But the first two - plus extra innings - produced a game that took 6 hours and 59 minutes of clock time to complete.

"I'm more of the mentality of trying to play a game when you can, even if it is late," Twins manager Paul Molitor said. "It might have been a little different if we had a day game [Saturday]. I don't like doubleheaders if we can avoid them. I was in touch with head crew chief Bill (Miller) and talked to (Royals GM) Dayton Moore a little bit.

"We all thought it was best to play if we got out there some time around midnight. That's what happened. And electrical failure, and extra innings. Those are the kinds of things that happened."

As Friday turned into Saturday, the Twins offense dozed off. And the Royals got a single by Eric Hosmer to pull out a 5-4 win in 11 innings. All that time. All those innings. And the Twins fell to 0-5 at Kauffman Stadium this season.

"It's a tough loss," Molitor said. "We're having trouble with the Royals and we haven't won a game in this park and it is frustrating."

Twins righthander Ryan Pressly fought through challenging ninth and 10th innings, stranding two runners in each. He got out of a two on, one out jam in the 10th by striking out Raul Mondesi then getting Jerrod Dyson to tap back to the mound. He threw 45 pitches, his most since 2013.

The Twins went with rookie J.T. Chargois, their next to last available reliever, in the 11th. Cheslor Cuthbert led off with a single and Lorenzo Cain followed with a walk. Hosmer inexplicably showed bunt twice during his at bat. But he got a 3-2 fastball and lined it off the wall in right. Cuthbert is slow, but ambled around third to score the winning run.

The Twins fought for as long as they could, but they had just one hit in 6 2/3 innings after the rain delay. Kansas City got the winning run to second in each of the last four innings and five of the last six before Hosmer came through at 2:15 a.m.

Kansas City scored three runs in the second off of Twins righthander Jose Berrios - who walked three batters and hit another in the inning. The Twins got a home run from Brian Dozier in the third to make it 3-1. Berrios responded with a scoreless third inning but gave up a run in the fourth. It was 4-1 when the Twins woke up and scored three runs off Royals righthander Edinson Volquez in the fifth.

The game was two outs from being official when heavy rains led to a 3 hour, 3 minute delay - the longest of the season for both teams.

Dozier had hit his 28th home run - tying his career high set last season - in the third. It was the seventh straight game with a homer against the Royals, just the fourth longest streak since 1913. The other three: Ken Griffey, Jr. in seven straight games against Texas in 1994; Harmon Killebrew in nine straight against the Kansas City A's in 1961; and Joe Adcock in nine straight against the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1956.

The radar offered little hope for a resumption, so the game - and all the stats accumulated - looked destined to be wiped out. Dozier was in danger of having a home run rained off his stat sheet for the second time in just over a week.

But the teams waited, and waited some more.

"A lot of time to whip (Trevor) Plouffe in cards," Dozier said.

The game resumed at 11:44 p.m.. There were only a few thousand umbrella-wielding, rain poncho-wearing fans left when the game resumed as a light drizzle fell.

Then everything came to a halt, again.

A portion of Kauffman Stadium's lights were set to switch off at midnight, with the rest staying on for the cleaning crew. The Royals attempted to change the timer to avoid the partial shutdown, but it happened at 12:17 a.m. That led to a 12-minute delay.

The lights eventually fired back up. But the Twins' bats never did.

"Now looking at it," Dozier said. "I wished we would have been washed out."