The Royals are in Minneapolis to open a four-game series at Target Field, and they need this one to count. Kansas City, 24-38, is trying to win another road series against the Twins while carrying a league-worst 9-21 record away from home.
That is why Royals vs Twins is showing up on search pages now: the series starts today, the clubs already met earlier this season in Kansas City, and Minnesota lost that set before coming home at 29-34. The Twins have dropped six of their last eight games, so the matchup carries more urgency than a routine divisional trip.
The numbers say why Kansas City has a chance and why it still feels like an uphill climb. The Royals score 3.84 runs per game and allow 4.65, while the Twins average 4.60 runs and give up 4.98. Byron Buxton has been Minnesota’s most explosive player with a 132 wRC+ and 17 homers, and Luke Keaschall has hit.302/.396/.395 over his last 26 games. Trevor Larnach has been strong at home at.284/.442/.418, and Austin Martin has handled lefties at.306/.457/.435. But the Twins also carry flaws that keep showing up, from Brooks Lee’s minus-7 Outs Above Average to a running game that has been efficient enough at 71 percent on stolen-base attempts while still giving up more steals than any team in baseball and throwing out just 17 percent of attempts.
Thursday’s opener is set for Andrew Morris, who is being asked to start after spending most of the season in the bullpen and has not gone deeper than 3.2 innings this year. He posted a 4.09 ERA in 94.2 innings as a starter in Triple-A last season, but this is a much tougher assignment against a division opponent that can make a short outing look even shorter. Seth Lugo, meanwhile, has a career 7.29 ERA in 21 innings at Target Field, a reminder that Kansas City has not always found comfort in this ballpark.
The deeper issue for Minnesota is that the roster has not fully matched its top-end talent. Joe Ryan has been one of the best pitchers in baseball by Fangraphs WAR, with the 12th-highest strikeout rate and the sixth-lowest walk rate, and he is 8-2 with a 2.58 ERA in 12 career starts against the Royals. Yet the Twins have needed that level of excellence because too much else has been uneven, from Connor Prielipp’s rough stretch of 16 runs in 14.1 innings over his last three starts to a bullpen with a 4.75 ERA, the second-lowest strikeout rate in baseball and the sixth-highest walk rate. Even after last year’s trade-deadline selloff, when Minnesota kept Buxton and Ryan, the team has spent much of this season hovering near.500 while leaning on a small group of elite performances to cover for a roster full of castoffs and underperformers.
Friday’s game will air exclusively on Apple TV, with Zebby Matthews scheduled to start. He has made 29 career major league starts and owns a 5.71 ERA, though he did allow just two runs in 13 home innings this year. If Kansas City is going to leave Minneapolis with a road series in hand, it likely has to do it before the Twins can turn the matchup back toward Ryan’s arm and a home crowd that has seen enough uneven baseball already.
