KANSAS CITY, Mo. \u2014 Byron Buxton and Kody Clemens homered and the Minnesota Twins beat Kansas City 5-1 on Sunday to drop the Royals two games back for the last AL wild card.<\/p>\n
Buxton led off the game against Michael Lorenzen (5-10) with his 30th homer, extending his career high. He was hit by a 91.8 mph sinker in the fifth inning and was replaced for the bottom of the sixth because of what the Twins said was a bruised left knee.<\/p>\n
Clemens hit his 16th homer in the fourth, a 451-drive that gave Minnesota a 3-0 lead. Minnesota padded its advantage in the fourth with a double steal, with Royce Lewis on first and Luke Keaschall on third.<\/p>\n
Kansas City (73-69) fell two games behind Seattle (75-68) for the third AL wild card.<\/p>\n
Bailey Ober (5-7) gave up one run and four hits in 5 1\/3 innings,<\/p>\n
Lorenzen allowed four runs and five hits in 5 1\/3 innings.<\/p>\n
Kansas City scored on Vinnie Pasquantino’s RBI single in the sixth.<\/p>\n
Key moment<\/p>\n
Kansas City had the potential tying run at the plate with one out in the eighth before Kody Funderburk struck out Pasquantino and Justin Topa retired Salvador Perez on a groundout.<\/p>\n
Key stat<\/p>\n
Buxton has 17 leadoff homers, including eight this season.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
Twins: RHP Simeon Woods Richardson (5-4, 4.53 ERA) starts Monday against the Los Angeles Angels and RHP Caden Dana (0-0, 4.91).<\/p>\n
Royals: RHP Ryan Bergert (2-1, 2.61) will be on the mound Monday for the start of a four-game series at Cleveland, which starts RHP Slade Cecconi (5-6, 4.78)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KANSAS CITY, Mo. \u2014 Byron Buxton and Kody Clemens homered and the Minnesota Twins beat Kansas City 5-1…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":141125,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[1558,9883,6946,87863,23555,2326,363,25696,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-141124","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-byron-buxton","10":"tag-kansas-city","11":"tag-kody-clemens","12":"tag-michael-lorenzen","13":"tag-minnesota-twins","14":"tag-mlb","15":"tag-royals","16":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}