Postgame: Trevor May provided quality start without his best stuff

A bunch of extra stuff from the Twins' 2-0 loss on Tuesday:

— Trevor May didn't have his best stuff on Tuesday, far from it, he said. Yet he still managed a quality start, an outing that under normal circumstances would earn him his third straight victory.

"It's something that maybe in the past wouldn't have gone as well," May said after walking three, allowing seven hits and still holding Kansas City to just one run his six innings. "There was very little fastball command. I was struggling to get ahead of guys."

Yet after giving up a double, a single and a run to the first two batters of the game, May pitched a shutout, three times leaving runners in scoring position. His goal was to go deeper into the game, but "to get through six with how I felt, it could have been worse."

His secret: The Royals were looking for his fastball in the early innings, so May used his changeup a lot. Exactly 30 times, he said, probably a career-high.

— Trevor Plouffe had the game's only hit, a bit ironic since he had had only one hit in June before Tuesday. He came up as the tying run with two outs in the ninth inning, and had an interesting battle with Royals closer Greg Holland, who quickly got behind 3-0.

"I'm the tying run — I don't want to lose my aggressiveness completely, but I do know if I get on base, the winning run is coming to the plate," Plouffe said. "I had the green light, and was looking [for a pitch] out over the plate. He came in."

Plouffe took the fastball for a strike. "Then 3-and-1, I'm ready to hit, and he kind of got one up and in on me," Plouffe said. He swung and fouled off that fastball — strike two.

"On 3-2, if I was a betting man, I'd have bet slider there, and he gave it to me. I still couldn't hit it," Plouffe said of the game-ending swing-and-miss. "He's got a good one."

He does, and now he's got 11 saves, too.

— Chris Young threw only 83 pitches and had a no-hitter in the seventh inning. Most managers wouldn't have pulled a starting pitcher after just one hit, even though it was a triple. But most managers don't have the bullpen that Ned Yost does. When the no-hitter was gone, Yost didn't hesitate to turn the game over to his remarkable bullpen. Young was good, after all, but the score was only 1-0 at the time.

And it worked, of course. With Plouffe at third and the infield in, left-hander Franklin Morales induced Eddie Rosario to hit a hot grounder to shortstop Alcides Escobar, and Plouffe was unable to move as Escobar threw Rosario out. Kelvin Herrera was then summoned to face Kurt Suzuki, and the result was another grounder to Escobar, this one inning-ending.

Wade Davis pitched the eighth with no problem, and Holland finished the Twins off.

"I would have loved to have stayed out there. I felt good," Young said. "But we're trying to win games. Ned made the great, right call."

— Plouffe, on rounding second in the seventh inning and heading for third for his second triple of the season: "Did I look fast? That's good. Like American Pharaoh right there."