Twins come up empty time and again with runners on base in 2-0 loss to Royals

Royce Lewis fouled a pitch directly off his left kneecap during his final at-bat of the night Saturday, and hobbled around for a few minutes waiting for the throbbing to subside.

And that wasn’t even the most painful part of Lewis’ night.

Four times the Twins third baseman batted with runners in scoring position, and four times he ended the inning without a run. The Twins’ eighth shutout loss of the season wasn’t entirely Lewis’ fault, of course — the lineup as a whole went 0-for-10 when given those scoring opportunities — but his was the most notable fizzle among many in the Twins’ 2-0 loss to Kansas City at Target Field.

“Yeah, it’ll frustrate you a little bit. We did a heck of a job finding our way on, especially early on in the game,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. “And then we didn’t get any hits. The game doesn’t look too much different than what we did the last couple of days, except the last few days when we got the guys on, someone came up and whacked a good one or hit one in the gap.”

The defeat ended the Twins’ modest three-game winning streak, and marked the Royals’ first shutout in Target Field since they limited the Twins to one hit on June 9, 2015.

Lewis’ 0-for-4 included a first-inning strikeout with Austin Martin on third base; a 6-4-3 double play with Martin on third again; a routine fly out to left with Alan Roden on second base in the fifth; and that seventh-inning strikeout that made him wince, it coming with Ryan Jeffers on second.

“It hit him right on the knee. Yeah, it hurts. It hurts, and guys are generally pretty good about getting crushed and within 30 seconds, they’ll get right back in the box and be ready to go,” Baldelli said. “He said he was ready to go. “

“It felt good. A little bit of a relief, too — [I’ve] been grinding a lot this year,” Ober said. “It’s been a while since I feel like I’ve finished a game, top to bottom, where I feel like I did well and put my team in a good position. I probably felt the best physically and mechanically [that I have] for the whole season, even in the spring. So I feel like I’m making the right steps forward and today showed I’m slowly getting there.”

Most important: None of those four hits left the playing field, a significant step forward for a pitcher who had surrendered 17 home runs in his previous seven starts.

“One of the main things you can control is just having better misses,” Ober said. “I mean, the home runs I’ve been giving up aren’t necessarily right down the middle. Sometimes [the pitch is] executed and they’re still hit. I’m just doing my part and having better misses. Just being able to be in command and kind of be in control of the game.”

Ober’s lone mistake — though just as costly as the homers, as it turned out — came after he retired the first eight Royals he faced, including the first two of the third inning on easy fly outs. But Kyle Isbel dropped a fastball into left field to break up that string, and Maikel Garcia followed with a well-placed line drive to right-center, which bounced to the wall before right fielder Kody Clemens could reach it. Isbel scored on Garcia’s double, a run that hardly seemed fatal so early in a game against a Twins team that had scored 24 runs in its previous three games.

BOXSCORE: Kansas City 2, Twins 0

Then again, the Twins are the AL Central leaders in runners left on base.

“We didn’t have any extra-base hits tonight to help our cause,” Baldelli said with a shrug. “We had good at-bats, we had some balls good. Just, singles and walks and such.”

But while the Twins put a runner on base in each of the first seven innings, including three more hits from Jeffers — he has reached base in 10 of his past 12 plate appearances and is hitting .386 during his 11-game hitting streak — they never drove one home. Rookie lefthander Noah Cameron gave up six hits in 5⅔ innings, plus two walks, but never slipped with runners on base. Four Royals relievers followed that pattern, with closer Carlos Estévez retiring the Twins in order to earn his 29th save in 35 chances.