MINNEAPOLIS _ The shortest scheduled games in Twins' history were mostly short on offense, too.
Nelson Cruz smacked two home runs and was robbed of a third, but the Twins managed only a split of their first set of seven-inning games in a Target Field doubleheader on Saturday. Cruz's third-deck homer in Game 1 carried the Twins to a 4-2 victory, but his blast off the limestone in straightaway center field in Game 2 was one of only two Twins' hits, and Kansas City won by an identical 4-2 score.
Jose Berrios was not sharp in the second game. The right-hander, now 1-3 on the season, left the bases loaded in the first inning without a run, gave up three singles and a run in the second, and surrendered a three-run homer by Whit Merrifield in the fourth inning.
The Twins' bullpen held the Royals scoreless over the final three innings _ completing six shutout innings on the day _ but the Twins didn't manage another hit.
In Game 1, Jake Odorizzi learned a harsh truth about scoring rules: They still require five.
Not that he would complain.
Odorizzi allowed only one baserunner through four innings, but surrendered a two-run home run in the fifth. In throwing 79 pitches to record 12 of Kansas City's 21 outs, Odorizzi did not meet the required five-complete-innings standard to be credited with the victory. Instead, it went to Tyler Duffey, who needed only 10 pitches to finish the inning for the starter.
No, pitcher "wins" don't mean nearly as much as they once did. And they particularly don't to Odorizzi, who had to be delighted to rebound from a so-so 2020 debut one week earlier in a loss to the Royals.
"As long as we win the day I pitch, I'm perfectly fine with that," said Odorizzi, who missed the season's first two weeks with back soreness. "My importance as a starting pitcher is for the team to know what to expect the days I take the mound _ expect to win."
As for Duffey? "Maybe he can take (the win) to arbitration, get some money out of it," Odorizzi joked.
The All-Star right-hander retired the first 11 hitters he faced on Saturday, six of them via strikeout, before Salvador Perez's single erased any thoughts of a seven-inning no-hitter. But Ryan McBroom led off the fifth with a double that just stay in fair territory deep in right field, and Maikel Franco followed with a home run into the bleachers in left-center to cut Odorizzi's day short.
The entire game was short, of course, due to MLB's coronavirus rules allowing doubleheaders to last only seven innings. Friday's rainout changed Saturday's scheduled nine-inning game into two of seven innings, the first time in Twins history that the team hadn't planned to play nine.
Cruz drove a two-run homer off the face of the upper deck in the third inning to give Odorizzi a lead, and he nearly homered again in the fifth. But Alex Gordon gloved the ball at the top of the fence, and it fell to the warning track for a double. Cruz scored a moment later on an Eddie Rosario double.
