Royals 8, Twins 4: Willians is fun, Berrios is alright, bullpen is bad

Yes, it happened. Willians Astudillo took his first MLB walk. The first thing they teach you in journalism school is to lead with the most important part of the story.

Jose Berrios walked three Royals batters in the first two innings, contributing to a 2-0 Kansas City lead. He then had a little voice in his head tell him “these are the Kansas City Royals and you’re one of only two starters with a guaranteed job next season.” He didn’t walk anybody else and totaled nine strikeouts in six full frames.

However, Twins pitchers named “Trevor” did not fare as well. May promptly gave up a two-out solo shot to Adalberto Mondesi and, more worser, Hildenberger blew the save then lost the game on a Salvador Perez grand slam.

(Lotta grand slams in Twins games this week.)

Astudillo was his usual piece of magnificence. He was 3-4 with the aforementioned walk, he batted in what should have been the winning run, he made a diving tag on Ryan O’Hearn trying to score the tying run. He did swing-and-miss at one pitch for the first time in his last 24 at-bats, because Twins fans can’t have nice things.

Royals starter Jorge Lopez, so close to perfect last Saturday, was not very close to perfect tonight. He let the Twins take a 3-2 lead in the fifth inning (including hits by Gregorio Petit and Robbie Grossman) and unfortunately had to leave the game with a rib contusion. Hopefully he’s OK.

Taylor Rogers continued his terrific shutdown streak, allowing no runs in his last 20.2 innings. Joe Mauer had a double. But to heck with that, let’s watch this:

Who knows what his future holds, but the man is having more fun than anybody in baseball right now. Robot Roll Call:

Co-comments of the thread: Asthix with “How dare they walk Astudillo like that! You’d think pitchers would want to get him to swing and miss at this point.”

Then kenzertz at the end with: “I thought I was done drinking.”