Triple play, flawless relief give Twins split in Kansas City with 2-1 victory

Bailey Ober needed only 51 pitches to get through four innings Sunday, but with his team nursing a one-run lead, Twins manager Rocco Baldelli decided to turn to his previously shaky bullpen to start the fifth.

That bullpen responded with one of its best performances of the season. Five relievers combined for the final 15 outs, and the Twins — helped by turning a popped-up bunt into a triple play — held off the Kansas City Royals 2-1 on Sunday at Kauffman Stadium.

A day after Tyler Duffey, Taylor Rogers and Hansel Robles pitched the last three innings of a 5-4 victory, the Twins went two innings deeper Sunday, and they won the final two games of their four-game series following Friday's 14-5 loss.

"Every guy, one after the other, came in locked and loaded, and throwing the ball exactly the way that we would want them to," Baldelli said. "Everyone looked sharp. … That's how you win good, tight ballgames, you get efforts like that from your entire group."

Luke Farrell struck out two batters in the fifth inning and earned his fifth career victory. Jorge Alcala needed only 10 pitches to dispatch the top of the Royals order in the sixth. Duffey recorded his seventh consecutive scoreless appearance with a quick seventh. And Robles pitched his first 1-2-3 inning in his past six outings to get through the eighth.

Robles started the ninth inning as well to face Whit Merrifield, but the Kansas City leadoff hitter lined a double to left — the fifth time in his past six appearances that Robles has given up a double to begin an inning. But Rogers entered and froze Carlos Santana with a breaking ball for strike three, then got Andrew Benintendi out on a fly ball to left.

Baldelli then elected to walk frequent Twins nemesis Salvador Perez as the potential winning run. Rogers retired Kelvin Gutierrez on a forceout, giving the Twins their fifth consecutive one-run victory. They won back-to-back one-run games for the first time this season.

"I don't want to say rolling the dice, but we were going to take our chances just putting him on and letting Rog go out there and do his job," Baldelli said of intentionally walking Perez.

Ober also did his job in his second major league start. He cruised through his first two innings, then gave up five hits over his last two. But he departed having given up only one run, thanks in part to a third-inning triple play.

After Jarrod Dyson and Cam Gallagher began the inning with singles, No. 9 hitter Nicky Lopez attempted a sacrifice. But he popped his bunt up high enough that charging first baseman Miguel Sano caught the ball with ease.

"I initially thought I was going to go try to catch it," the 6-foot-9 Ober said. "And then I peeked out of my left eye and I saw Miggy running in and I was like, 'I'm not going to run into him.' "

The runners had already committed to advancing, so Sano tossed to shortstop Andrelton Simmons for the second out, and Simmons threw to Nick Gordon covering first base for the third.

"We've got it a few times," Sano said. "I'm really happy about it because those are special moments right there."

According to the Society for American Baseball Research, it's only the eighth 3-6-4 triple play in major league history, and the first since Cleveland's Toby Harrah lined into one — Bruce Bochte to Jim Anderson to Julio Cruz — at home against Seattle on May 31, 1980.

The Twins didn't hit a home run for the first time in 17 games, failing to set a new team record. Sano hit an RBI double in the third inning, and Trevor Larnach drove in the go-ahead run when he was hit by a Brady Singer pitch with the bases loaded, but the Twins failed to score again despite collecting 10 hits — nine of them singles.

No matter, thanks to some much-needed relief.

"We've seen that recently, guys are starting to get on a roll here," Duffey said of the relievers. "Hopefully we can take that home and ride this wave a little bit."