Griffin Jax had the first scoreless outing of his career as the visiting Minnesota Twins defeated the Kansas City Royals 4-0 Saturday night.
Jake Cave, Miguel Sano and Luis Arraez each collected two hits for the Twins (72-89). Arraez had two RBIs.
Jax (4-5), who came into the game with a 6.78 ERA, shut down the Royals’ bats in his five innings. He allowed just one hit and walked two, striking out three. It was easily the best outing of his career in his 18th appearance and 14th start.
Caleb Thielbar, Tyler Duffey and Alex Colome combined for four scoreless innings of relief.
Royals (74-87) starter Kris Bubic (6-7) allowed three runs (two earned) on seven hits in 6 2/3 innings. He struck out five and didn’t walk a batter.
Josh Donaldson hit a two-out solo home run in the first to put the Twins on the board.
The Twins added an unearned run in the fourth. Sano ripped a one-out double down the left-field line. He advanced to third on an error by Nicky Lopez at short and scored on a sacrifice fly by Arraez.
A two-out single by Mitch Garver drove in Byron Buxton in the fifth with the Twins’ third run. Buxton doubled, his third two-bagger in the last two games. Buxton has seven hits in his last three games.
Arraez drove in his second run on a seeing-eye single in the eighth, scoring Donaldson.
Salvador Perez was hitless in four at-bats for the second straight night as he seeks to break the Royals’ franchise record for home runs in a season. He remains tied with Jorge Soler (2019) with 48 round-trippers.
He already has established the major league record for home runs by a player who played at least 75 percent of his team’s games at catcher. He passed Hall of Famer Johnny Bench with his 46th home run.
–Field Level Media
