For a team that was 20 games under .500 coming into the weekend four games series, the Minnesota Twins have taken out their aggression on the Royals, defeating Kansas City for the second night in a row. The final Friday night was 5-2.
Danny Duffy took his first career loss, as he allowed three runs on seven hits over five innings pitched. Duffy will learn with time how to keep his pitch count down at the major league level, but once again it took him a high pitch count (96) to get through five. He falls to 0-1 overall.
The Twins got started early as Denard Span doubled in the second inning scoring two runners, and then Michael Cuddyer homered to center in the third to give Minnesota a 3-0 lead after three innings.
Kansas City got on the board in the fourth scoring two runs, first when Brayan Pena reached on an infield single, scoring Billy Butler. The Royals added a second run when Alex Gordon singled to score Pena.
Minnesota went on to add single runs in the sixth and eighth innings, off Tim Collins and Blake Wood respectively.
Carl Pavano went the distance for the Twins, tossing nine innings, allowing two earned runs on nine hits. He improved to 3-5 with the win.
Eric Hosmer continued his impressive hitting, going 2-for-4, while Billy Butler got his averaged back above .300, going 3-for-4 on the night. A full boxscore can be seen here.
Minnesota improves to 19-37 overall, while the Royals fall to 25-32.
Luke Hochevar (3-5 4.96 ERA) will look to get Kansas City back to winnings way on Saturday evening (6:10), as he faces Nick Blackburn (4-4 3.57) of the Twins.