Mike Minor puts Kansas City Royals on his back early, offense rolls late to stop slide

The Kansas City Royals needed someone to step up and take over the game, pick up the rest of the team and shake them out of a recent funk that included five consecutive losses.

Veteran left-hander Mike Minor came to the rescue in the first game of a four-game road series against a hot Oakland Athletics club that entered the day sitting atop the American League West and having won six of seven.

Minor held an explosive lineup to one run through seven innings and the Royals scored three runs in the seventh and three more in the eighth on the way to a 6-1 win in front of an announced 3,211 Thursday night at the Oakland Coliseum.

Hunter Dozier and Kelvin Gutierrez registered clutch RBIs in the seventh inning as the Royals (30-31) swung the game. Jorge Soler and Andrew Benintendi both hit home runs to provide insurance. Soler’s blast pushed his career total to 100.

Minor struck out eight, allowed just three hits and one walk in seven innings.

“We felt like the fastball up in the zone was a good pitch,” Minor said. “We tried to stay there. They’re a good hitting team, and I felt like they hammer balls down. That’s what we saw and tried to expose it.”

The Athletics entered the day batting .280 in June and .373 (25 for 67) with runners in scoring position. For the season, they had the fifth-best batting average in the AL with runners in scoring position (.261). They also ranked fourth in the league in home runs (77) and fifth in extra-base hits (192).

Minor finished last season as a member of the Athletics. The Texas Rangers traded Minor and cash to the division rival Athletics for two players to be named later (Dustin Harris and Marcus Smith) on August 31.

In five games (four starts) with the Athletics, Minor went 1-1 with a 5.48 ERA, one complete game, a .197 opponent’s batting average, 1.03 WHIP, 27 strikeouts and seven walks in 21 1/3 innings.

“I feel like it’s a weird situation just because you respect all the guys, but it’s competition,” Minor said. “So I don’t want to get embarrassed out there. I don’t want them hitting the ball out of the ballpark, that’s for sure.

“There’s the competition aspect of it and also knowing those guys personally now from being over there. They have a thing over there where it’s just like you feel welcome right away and you feel a part of the team. I was only over there for a month or whatever it was. I felt like I got to know those guys pretty quickly, and they accept everybody no matter what your personality is or who you are.”

Thursday night, Minor retired eight of the first nine batters he faced and allowed only one hit through the first three innings.

His one blemish came in the fourth inning when Jed Lowrie mashed a solo home run to start the frame. Lowrie gave the Athletis a 1-0 advantage. That run marked the sixth consecutive run scored against Minor via a home run. He allowed five runs on three homers in his previous start against the Minnesota Twins.

Minor on Thursday allowed just one more hit after the home run. He threw a season-high 106 pitches and turned in his third quality start of the season.

The stellar pitching performance kept the game within reach, and the Royals offense ignited late and scored more runs in a two-inning span than they had in their entire previous three-game series against the Los Angeles Angels.

“I’m really happy for Hunter Dozier and Soler both to be impact bats today,” Royals manager Mike Matheny said. “We talk so much about how much we’re putting on them.”

The Royals hit singles in the first and second innings, but then they went 13 consecutive batters without anyone reaching base against Athletics starting pitcher Frankie Montas.

Benintendi’s single to center field in the seventh inning gave the Royals a leadoff batter on base for the first time in the game.

Soler reached on a catcher’s interference — his sixth of the season — after a video review. That put two men on with one out. Dozier’s hard-hit top-spun ball glanced off the glove of Athletics third baseman Matt Chapman and allowed Benintendi to score the tying run.

Gutierrez then slapped a 1-2 slider back up the middle for a two-run single that scored Soler and Dozier as the Royals grabbed a 3-1 lead. That also snapped a stretch of 46 innings during which the Royals hadn’t led.

With two outs in the eighth inning, Benintendi homered off left-handed reliever Jesús Luzardo. Beninendi hadn’t homered against a lefty since September 3, 2019, a stretch of 91 at-bats. Salvador Perez followed with a double, and Soler’s two-run homer capped the scoring.

“It’s something that I don’t think it’s coincidence, we see a little bit of an offensive explosion and I think we feed off of those opportunities for situational hitting,” Matheny said. “... When our guys pull off those things, I think it just amplifies the ability for guys to go up and take better at-bats once they see that we’re doing some of the little things right.”