Last-place Royals sweep Twins; Minnesota's losing streak hits five games

KANSAS CITY, MO. — The Twins could have hired planes to fly over major league stadiums Sunday with banners reading "Trade Us A Righthanded Hitter." But this was probably just as effective.

Two days before the MLB trade deadline, the Twins put their weakness against lefthanded pitching on display for potential trade partners one last time, going down meekly against soft-tossing Royals starter Ryan Yarbrough and two relievers and losing 2-1 to Kansas City at Kauffman Stadium. The loss was the Twins' fifth in a row, cutting their AL Central lead to just a half-game over the Guardians, and marked last-place Kansas City's first three-game winning streak of the year.

Yarbrough, who gave up seven runs in his only previous start against the Twins, never threw a pitch faster than 88 miles per hour in his seven innings Sunday, and his changeup sauntered across the plate at 72. Yet aside from Matt Wallner's long home run over the Royals bullpen in the third inning and Byron Buxton's sixth-inning double, no Twins batter ever reached second base.

"You could tell early that his mix of different shapes and different speeds was tough. You're hoping as the game goes on that you adjust to it," Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. "We just weren't able to do it."

Surely help is on the way, right?

"It's always a legit question right before the trade deadline," Baldelli said. "Sometimes there are moves and you always have to be open to pretty much everything. But when you look [at the] big picture, I think we have a very good team. I'm not sitting here begging for anything at all."

No, but it's hard to take the Twins seriously as a postseason contender with such a glaring weakness. The Twins collectively own a .218 batting average against lefthanded pitching, by far the worst in the major leagues. Sunday's loss was their seventh in games in which they have given up only one or two runs; only the Tigers have more, with nine.

"There are a lot of things we have to do better right now. We're not playing good baseball going into the trade deadline," Baldelli said. "We've mixed some really good baseball with some really bad baseball — and it's probably evened out to: not good enough."

It wasn't Sunday, not against Yarbrough (4-5) and his slow-and-slower repertoire.

"We're all used to seeing 90 [mph], 91 and up, so obviously seeing that guy was really difficult to time him up," said Castro, the only player on either team with more than one hit, both of them singles. "And throwing all those off-speed pitches, when he throws the fastball, it looks like really fast. But that's part of baseball."

So is pitching in the heat, which cut short Kenta Maeda's relatively strong start. The Twins righthander gave up four hits over five innings and was pulled after throwing 94 pitches in 94-degree sunshine.

Maeda (2-6) gave up a solo home run by Freddy Fermin in the second inning, then gave up a line-drive single in the third to Nicky Lopez. Maikel Garcia followed with a double that ricocheted off the left-field wall and over Castro's head, enabling Lopez to score what turned out to be the decisive run.

Staying cool was made more difficult by Yarbrough's mastery of the Twins, since Maeda had little time to rest between innings. So he was proud that after enduring a 24-pitch fourth inning without giving up a run, he finished off his outing with three quick outs in the fifth, two of them strikeouts.

He even held Bobby Witt Jr., who swamped the Twins with back-to-back four-hit games, hitless in three plate at-bats.

"I tried my best to maintain my concentration" despite the heat and humidity, said Maeda, who finished July with a 2.93 ERA over five starts. "I did give up two runs, but I felt like I did a good job today."

With Cleveland now within a half-game of the division lead, the Twins — whatever their roster looks like on Tuesday at St. Louis — will need to do even better jobs over the coming weeks.

Getting swept "drives some points home for me, but I don't know if it drives any points home for the organization as a whole," Baldelli said, referring to the trade possibility. "Hopefully, we can recapture a little bit [of positivity] when we get to St. Louis and just turn it around. We've turned it around quickly before."