MINNEAPOLIS — Chris Archer made his major league debut six days after Bobby Witt Jr.'s 12th birthday. Who could have imagined the current rookie would celebrate at the former rookie's expense a decade later?
Witt, already a strong AL Rookie of the Year candidate, doubled three times Saturday, twice off the right-hander, and helped the Royals hand the first-place Twins their third loss in four games, 7-3 at Target Field.
Witt has eight hits vs. the Twins this year, with seven for extra bases (five doubles, a triple and a home run).
While Witt is a rising star who figures to victimize the Twins plenty of times over the next decade or two, Archer has yet to recapture the form that twice made him an All-Star. For the eighth time in his nine starts with the Twins, Archer was finished before the fifth inning began, this time giving up five runs (three earned) on seven hits over four innings.
And while the outing wasn't good, Archer was also the victim of some criminally bad luck. In the third inning, with the score tied 1-1, Archer retired the first two hitters on dribblers that didn't travel 70 feet combined, then gave up a single to Andrew Benintendi. Witt followed with a fly ball that sailed over left fielder Nick Gordon's head — and stuck under the padding on the outfield wall.
A normal bounce would have kept Benintendi on third base. Instead, Gordon had to race to the wall to retrieve the ball, allowing the Royals outfielder to beat the relay throw from Carlos Correa.
An inning later, Hunter Dozier hit a one-out comebacker that Archer couldn't handle, but the veteran right-hander won a nine-pitch battle with Carlos Santana for a strikeout. As Emmanuel Rivera batted, a slider squirted outside that catcher Gary Sanchez was unable to knock down, enabling Dozier to move up to second base and allowing him to score when Rivera hit a blooper to shallow right that Jorge Polanco, shifted up the middle, was unable to reach.
Then Nicky Lopez hit a routine grounder to Polanco, whose throw pulled Luis Arraez off first base for an error. With his pitch count for the inning nearing 30, Archer left a 1-0 fastball to Whit Merrifield high and over the middle, and Merrifield ricocheted it off the right-field wall, turning what could have been a scoreless inning into a three-run — and decisive — inning.
The Twins tried to climb back into the game, with Trevor Larnach hitting a solo home run into the Kansas City bullpen and Ryan Jeffers providing a two-out, two-run single in the sixth, breaking the Twins' 1-for-10 slump with the bases loaded.
But Juan Minaya, the veteran reliever called up from Class AAA St. Paul earlier in the day, gave up two runs in 2 1/3 innings in his 2022 debut.
The Twins loaded the bases with two out in the ninth inning, but Kyle Garlick's bid at a tying grand slam fell short on the warning track in center field.
Garlick was in the game in place of Max Kepler, who departed earlier because of tightness in his right knee. Sanchez also left early after growing ill under the 85-degree sunshine.
