Jim Thome dominates the show as the Minnesota Twins maintain lead in American League Central Division
Kansas City Royals had a lot to deal with and their predicament could not have come any harsher. The Minnesota Twins are looking to win the American League Central Division and their opponents seemed like the right ball club to get their winning ways under consistency. The fixture was played in Target field, Minneapolis and a crowd of 40,228 fans were in the stands, cheering for the division leaders. The only thing to look forward to was, whether the underdogs were going to score an upset or not?
The Royals were reeling with a bad league standing and much couldn’t be done to help their situation as they could not march to victory with Sean O’Sullivan on the mound. The versatile pitcher faced his 4th defeat in 5 matches and he struck out just 4 players in this outing, while pitching 4.2 times. He allowed 7 hits, 5 runs and 5 walks.
Kevin Slowey made his way back to the Twins’ pitching line up after recovering from triceps injury. The 26-year-old did well for his condition and in the duration of his 4 innings of play, he conceded 7 hits, 2 runs and 1 walk. The effort was good enough to put the team 3 points clear of the Chicago White Sox, who are on a 7 games winning streak.
Kansas City may be ranked 4th in the table but that didn’t stop the side from scoring. They made every hit count and in the top 2nd inning, they made Kevin Slowey a spectacle as the hitting faction got into full swing. Kila Ka’aihue made the team’s first hit single to the right. Alex Gordon then moved in to single to the right centre. When Brayan Pena was on the plate, Kila was on third base and the stage was set for a run to be made. Pena sacrificed himself with a grounder out to second and that made all the necessary luck count as the Royals registered their first run of the match. However, the action didn’t end there as Chris Getz got on the plate and smashed a double to the deep left. The move got Gordon through for the ball club’s second run and that is all that was required to announce a good lead in the game.
Unfortunately for the Royals, Jim Thome has been in amazing form off late and there is a certain reason why the Twins are leading the league Division with 3 games to their name. Much to the anticipation of the jeering home fans, Minnesota scored. The side responded to the Royals in the bottom second innings and much was owed to the reputation of Thome who sat on 584 career home runs. Sean O’Sullivan wanted to do nothing with the legend and walked him to his first base. Delmon Young and James Jerry Hardy also moved up the diamond with their walk and it came as a stunning surprise that Jim was sitting on third base without running. The inevitable was going to occur and Matt Tolbert helped move things forward with his sacrifice fly smash to the right. The team registered 1 run on the board and more were to follow.
In the bottom 4th innings, Michael Cuddyer positioned himself on first base with an earlier single to the right. Jim Thome came on once again and this time he smashed a double to the deep right to get Cuddyer through for the equalizer. The Twins would finally take the lead in the bottom 5th when Joe Mauer was on first base and Jason Kubel was on the batting plate. The hard hitter made Sean pay as he banged his pitch 411 feet homer to the left and got two runs on the board. However, that didn’t stop the action as Thome entered the score records again with a gigantic 432 feet homer to the right.
Royals were now two runs behind and they responded in the top 6th innings with Brayan Pena who got Gordon to score off a double to the deep right. Later Pena made his way to third base on Getz sacrifice to the pitcher. He would score subsequently when Yuniesky Betancourt grounded out to second place. However, that would mark the last time for Kansas City as they crashed to a 4-5 defeat.
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