Taj Bradley pitched six innings of five-hit ball, Minnesota homered three times in the ninth inning to break open a close game, and the Twins beat the Kansas City Royals 5-1 on Thursday to avoid a three-game series sweep.<\/p>\n
Bradley (1-0) struck out three and walked one while out-dueling Cole Ragans (0-2), helping the Twins improve to 2-0 with him on the mound. Minnesota was winless in its other four games on a season-opening six-game trip through Baltimore and Kansas City.<\/p>\n
Kody Clemens scored on an error by five-time Gold Glove-winning catcher Salvador Perez in the second, and Byron Buxton added a sacrifice fly off John Schreiber in the eighth, before the Twins teed off against Royals reliever Steven Cruz in the ninth.<\/p>\n
Matt Wallner began the barrage with his homer to left, Clemens followed two batters late with his first of the season, and Josh Bell gave the Twins their first back-to-back homers since last July with his shot off Cruz to right field.<\/p>\n
The only offense for Kansas City came in the eighth, when Maikel Garcia and Bobby Witt Jr. put runners on the corners with back-to-back singles, and Vinnie Pasquantino hit a sacrifice fly. But after Perez grounded into a fielder\u2019s choice, Twins reliever Taylor Rogers struck out Jac Caglianone with a sweeper out of the zone to leave the tying run on second base.<\/p>\n
The meager offense came one a day after the Royals piled up 13 runs in a win over the Twins.<\/p>\n
Ragans bounced back nicely from a dismal opening day in Atlanta, when the 2024 All-Star surrendered three homers in a 6-0 loss to the Braves. The Royals\u2019 left-hander went six innings and allowed four hits and a walk while striking out eight.<\/p>\n
Up next
The Twins play their home opener Friday night against Tampa Bay with RHP Bailey Ober (0-0, 6.75 ERA) on the mound. Kansas City continues its homestand against Milwaukee with RHP Michael Wacha (0-0, 0.00) getting the start.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tFor Related Stories:\u00a0Minnesota Twins<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0Twins<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Taj Bradley pitched six innings of five-hit ball, Minnesota homered three times in the ninth inning to break…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":659721,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2388],"tags":[5,822,60,3190,4,148],"class_list":{"0":"post-659720","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-minnesota-twins","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-minnesota","10":"tag-minnesota-twins","11":"tag-minnesotatwins","12":"tag-mlb","13":"tag-twins"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116337597934339319","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=659720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659720\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/659721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}