Last in the American League in home runs, the Kansas City Royals connected twice Sunday at the most opportune times.

David Lough hit three doubles, then launched a tiebreaking homer in the eighth inning that led the Royals over the Minnesota Twins 9-8.

Lough hit his second homer of the season, sending a solo drive off Jared Burton (1-5) into the right-field seats for an 8-7 lead.

Eric Hosmer added a solo homer in the ninth for the Royals. Johnny Giavotella had three hits.

”We’re just trying to find ways to score runs, and if that comes from the home run or through small ball, we honestly don’t care,” Hosmer said.

The Royals have just 49 homers this year, 24 fewer than the next-closest team in the league: Minnesota.

Hosmer and Alex Gordon have seven home runs, Billy Butler has six and Mike Moustakas five. The quartet combined for 77 last season.

”They’ve got some hitters over there. Those guys can swing the bats. I know they haven’t been consistent doing it, but they’ve got some good young hitters who can pop a baseball,” Minnesota manager Ron Gardenhire said.

Aaron Crow (5-3) pitched 1 2-3 scoreless innings for the Royals. Greg Holland got his 17th save in 19 chances despite giving up a home run to Trevor Plouffe in the ninth.

Minnesota, which trailed 5-1 after four innings, got a two-run homer from Justin Morneau and an RBI double by pinch-hitter Josh Willingham to tie it at 7 in the seventh.

Ervin Santana allowed three earned runs and five hits in six innings for Kansas City. He has gone at least six innings in each of his 16 starts this season, the longest active streak in majors.

It was been a strong June for the right-hander. In six starts, he has a 1.99 ERA, limiting opponents to 27 hits and two home runs in 40 2-3 innings. He struck out four, but also had a season-high four walks.

The Royals led 5-4 when Lough, the Royals’ eighth-place hitter, doubled in the sixth off reliever Ryan Pressly and took third as Giavotella blooped a double to left-center between three fielders. Gordon was walked to intentionally load the bases before Alcides Escobar hit a two-run single.

”I don’t think I’ve ever had a day like this, not even in the minor leagues,” Lough said. ”It was one of those games where our offense was going to have to put together some runs.”

This was just the fourth time in 12 games that the Royals scored more than three runs.

”We’ve never lost confidence as an offense,” Hosmer said. ”We always knew we had the potential to put up days like this.”

Kevin Correia, the Twins’ most consistent starter, gave up five earned runs in five innings.

The Royals scored three times in the fourth. Lough hit an RBI double off the right-field wall and Giavotella had an RBI single for a 5-1 lead. Giavotella was recalled Saturday from Triple-A Omaha when the Royals designated outfielder Jeff Francoeur for assignment.

”They had a lot of hits today, between me and the bullpen, that weren’t well struck but got in spots to keep a rally going or get on base and start a rally,” Correia said. ”It’s just one of those games. We scored eight runs. That should be enough to win the game.”

Clete Thomas homered in the Minnesota fifth.

— Associated Press —

 Eric Hosmer hit two of Kansas City’s season-high four home runs, James Shields pitched six strong innings to win for first time in 11 starts and the Kansas City Royals beat the Minnesota Twins 9-3 on Friday night.

Billy Butler and Mike Moustakas also homered for the Royals.

Clete Thomas homered for the Twins, who got another rough start from P.J. Walters (2-4). Walters allowed six runs in three innings one start after giving up six in the first at Cleveland last Saturday.

The Royals entered the game with the fewest home runs in the majors (43) — two behind Miami — and had given Shields (3-6) some of the worst run support in the league. But the veteran right-hander had a three-run lead by the time he took the mound for the first time Friday, thanks to Butler’s three-run homer. Shields never allowed Minnesota to get close the rest of the way.

Down 4-0 in the third, Walters allowed a two-run homer to Moustakas and drew a chorus of boos from the home crowd. Anthony Swarzak took over for Walters in the fourth and gave up a solo shot to Hosmer in the fifth. Hosmer got Swarzak again in the seventh, this time with Alcides Escobar on base, for the second multihomer game of his career.

The offensive outburst was a welcome change for Shields, who had been stuck on 89 wins for his previous 10 starts despite putting up quality numbers. He entered Friday night’s game with the eighth-best ERA in the A.L. (2.92), third in innings (111) and eighth in strikeouts (99). But his run support of 3.00 per nine innings pitched was second-lowest in the league.

The Twins broke through against Shields in the fourth when Justin Morneau hit an RBI doubled. Morneau came around to score three batters later on a double by Brian Dozier. Thomas led off the fifth with a solo shot to right.

Shields worked 6 1/3 innings before being pulled for Tim Collins.

— Associated Press —

Samuel Deduno had that ever-important command, of his fastball and his emotions.

The key to keeping calm?

”Oh, just breathe,” Deduno said with a smile after he pitched seven sharp innings to send the Minnesota Twins to a 3-1 victory over the Kansas City Royals on Thursday.

One of Justin Morneau’s two doubles drove in Minnesota’s first run in the fourth, and Deduno took over from there.

”Some guys really look like they think they’re going to hit it, and then all of a sudden it just kind of moves late on them,” said Morneau, who handled more than his share of groundouts at first base during Deduno’s outing. ”He did a really nice job tonight. That was what we needed.”

Deduno (4-2) gave up only five hits and, more importantly, one walk. He struck out three and let only eight fair balls leave the infield. Jared Burton pitched a scoreless eighth and Glen Perkins notched his 20th save in 22 tries with a scoreless ninth inning despite allowing a walk and a double.

The Twins even managed to beat Jeremy Guthrie (7-6). The right-hander topped them twice earlier this season and brought a 6-2 record over nine previous career matchups into the game. Guthrie gave up an RBI single to Oswaldo Arcia right after Morneau’s big hit, but the other run he allowed was unearned.

Salvador Perez’s soaring home run, to the second deck in left field, was the only evidence of success by the Royals against the improving Deduno, who last year couldn’t find the plate despite showing some potential with his lively right arm.

”Everything moves. Just tough,” Royals designated hitter Billy Butler said. ”He’s got a good slider. Hard curve. He’s just real efficient.”

After shining for the Dominican Republic during the World Baseball Classic in March, Deduno has finally found the control of his fastball that escaped him before. His career walks-per-nine-innings ratio was 5.2 entering this game, buoyed by the 53 he issued last season in 79 innings.

In seven starts this year since being called up from Triple-A Rochester, Deduno has completed six innings with three runs or fewer allowed four times.

”He’s got a really nice natural cutter that just bores in on our lefties,” Royals manager Ned Yost said. ”We just haven’t done anything against him.”

Following consecutive singles to start the seventh, Deduno had runners at the corners with one out. But he struck out David Lough, celebrating the whiff with a slight hop off the mound at the end of his follow through. Then he got Elliot Johnson to ground out.

”That was a huge sequence of pitches,” Twins manager Ron Gardenhire said, adding: ”He’s more in control on the mound. His windup, he’s not falling all over the place.”

Said Deduno: ”Tonight, everything was working.”

For a couple of below-average teams, this was a crisply played game befitting of the clear-and-dry picturesque summer evening. The fielding error by Royals third baseman Mike Moustakas in the seventh that loaded the bags prior to Pedro Florimon’s sacrifice fly, which came against reliever Will Smith, was about the only blemish.

Lough, the right fielder, did his best to keep Guthrie in it by tracking down Morneau’s two-out double in the corner and start a textbook 9-4-2 relay to keep Josh Willingham from scoring in the sixth.

Guthrie lost his third straight start, but he could hardly be faulted for this one. He retired the first nine batters he faced and allowed six hits over 6 2-3 innings while striking out four and walking two.

The Royals, who have won five of six against the Twins in Kansas City this season, fell to 14-10 in June. That was their April record, too, but that ugly 8-20 mark in May is what has kept them from seriously challenging first-place Detroit in the AL Central.

The Twins improved to 11-4 in their last 15 home games.

— Associated Press —

Alex Gordon drove in David Lough in the 10th inning Wednesday night, giving the Kansas City Royals a 4-3 victory over the Atlanta Braves and a split of their two-game series.

Lough had entered the game the previous inning as a pinch hitter, but was still at-bat because Elliot Johnson was picked off first base to end the ninth. Lough singled off Braves reliever Alex Wood (0-2) to start the 10th and then reached second when Miguel Tejada laid down a perfect sacrifice bunt.

That set the stage for Gordon, who hit a solo home run earlier in the game. He dropped a base hit into shallow left field, allowing Lough to score easily as the Royals spilled from their dugout.

Aaron Crow (4-3) worked the 10th inning for the Royals, who had lost five of their last six. It was the sixth time in the last eight games that Kansas City played a one-run contest.

The Royals were actually in control through six innings.

Gordon ended a 159 at-bat homerless drought with his first-inning shot, the first leadoff homer of the season for the Royals. It was Gordon’s first home run since May 9 at Baltimore.

Billy Butler added a two-out double to right, and then the big DH chugged home when Salvador Perez got just enough of the bat on a pitch from Mike Minor to hit a single to left field.

The Royals tacked on another run in the third when Gordon singled to lead off the inning. Alcides Escobar put runners on the corners with nobody out before Eric Hosmer lined into a double play, but Butler managed to bring Gordon home with a timely single to make it 3-0.

That was all the offense until Luis Mendoza started to unravel in the seventh inning.

The Royals starter kept the Braves off balance with a mixture of fastballs and sliders, and had given up just three hits to that point. But he’d put runners on the corners with two outs when he was lifted for left-hander Bruce Chen, who promptly served up an RBI single to pinch-hitter Reed Johnson.

Chen walked Jason Heyward to load the bases and was replaced by right-hander Luke Hochevar, who gave up a tying two-run single to Justin Upton. Heyward was thrown out at third on the play to end the inning.

Minor allowed three runs on nine hits over six innings, while Mendoza gave up two runs on five hits over 6 2/3 innings. Neither of them factored into the decision.

Instead, it came down to a duel between bullpens.

Alex Avilan and Jordan Walden breezed through the Royals lineup, the only blip coming when Mike Moustakas singled off Walden with two outs in the ninth inning. Johnson came in to pinch run and strayed too far from first base, allowing Walden to pick him off and end the inning.

Hochevar wound up going 1 1/3 innings for the Royals, who brought in star closer Greg Holland to pitch the ninth inning. He struck out the side on just 11 pitches.

— Associated Press —

Kris Medlen is perfectly happy throwing crisp, pinpoint 89-mph fastballs, especially if the alternative is to throw 100-mph heat while living on the edge.

That would be the life of Braves closer Craig Kimbrel.

Both of them did their duty on Tuesday night in Atlanta’s first visit to Kansas City. Medlen outpitched the Royals’ Ervin Santana to position himself for the win, and Kimbrel survived a shaky ninth to preserve a 4-3 victory in the opener of their two-game series.

”You know how stressful it is trying to locate 89 every pitch?” Medlen deadpanned. ”It’s not very fun, but it’s a tough skill to do. It’s why I’m hanging around.”

Why he’s excelling, too. Medlen (5-7) improved to 4-1 in June. The victory wasn’t without drama once he left the game, though.

Jordan Walden had to pitch around a leadoff walk to get out of the eighth inning, and Kimbrel got into the same trouble in the ninth. But he did one worse, allowing a single to David Lough and letting him swipe second base to put the go-ahead run in scoring position with nobody out.

Kimbrel recovered to strike out Elliot Johnson and Jarrod Dyson, and then intentionally walked Alex Gordon to load the bases for Alcides Escobar. He flied out to right on the first pitch he saw to end the game, giving Kimbrel his 11th straight save and 22nd of the season.

”Whenever you walk the leadoff batter in a one-run ballgame,” he said, ”it puts you in a sticky situation, but we were able to work out of it.”

Jason Heyward drove in a pair of runs with a double in the fifth, and then broke a seventh-inning tie with his solo shot off Tim Collins (2-2). It was his sixth homer of the season.

Eric Hosmer hit a two-run homer in the fifth for the Royals.

”We had a lot of opportunities,” Johnson said. ”We didn’t make the most of them.”

In a curious twist to interleague play, the Royals had played 142 games against NL teams at Kauffman Stadium without a visit by Atlanta. If not for last year’s All-Star Game at the K, longtime Braves third baseman Chipper Jones would have retired having never played in the park.

Their debut wound up being dominated by pitching.

The Royals scratched out their first run off Medlen in the first when Alex Gordon reached on a single, took second on an error and went to third on a sacrifice bunt. But he was caught in a rundown on a grounder by Hosmer, who reached second before Gordon was tagged out.

Hosmer scored on Billy Butler’s ensuing single.

That was all the Royals would muster off Medlen until Escobar managed a two-out single in the fifth. The resurgent Hosmer followed with his tying two-run shot over the right-field wall, his fourth home run of the season but third in 10 games.

It proved to be timely, too, coming just after the Braves pulled ahead.

Ervin Santana had struck out five through the first three innings, but began running into trouble the second time through the Braves’ power-packed lineup. But it wasn’t home runs that gave them the lead, but a series of singles and doubles.

Chris Johnson led off the fifth with a double, and Andrelton Simmons put runners on the corners with his base hit. Jordan Schafer tied the game 1-all on his double, and Heyward’s double down the right-field line gave the Braves a 3-1 lead.

”I felt very good the whole game,” Santana said. ”I just missed a couple of pitches, and they made good adjustments on them.”

Heyward didn’t hit his double particularly hard. The homer off Collins was crushed.

Heyward greeted a 0-2 pitch from the Royals’ diminutive left-hander with a ferocious swing, sending the ball soaring over the wall in right field and giving the Braves a 4-3 lead.

”I was just looking for a pitch in the zone to hit,” he said. ”Looking for a pitch in the zone to hit right there and try not to miss it. Put a good swing on it.”

A good enough swing to give Kimbrel a chance to create some ninth-inning drama.

”It’s not the way you draw it up,” Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez said of the living-on-the-edge save, ”but we’ll take it.”

— Associated Press —

The Kansas City Royals announced Tuesday that left-handed pitcher Danny Duffy has been reinstated from the 60-day disabled list and optioned to Omaha. In order to make room for Duffy on the 40-man roster, the Royals have designated left-handed pitcher Francisley Bueno for assignment. Kansas City also announced that outfielder Quintin Berry has accepted his assignment to Triple-A Omaha.

Duffy, a 6-foot-3, 200-pound left-handed pitcher, has been sidelined the entire season recovering from “Tommy John” surgery.  Duffy, who is starting tonight for Omaha at Oklahoma City, has made 3 rehab starts. He has an 11.70 ERA with 8 walks and 10 strikeouts in 10.0 innings for the Storm Chasers.  Duffy made six starts for the Royals last season, sporting a 2-2 record with a 3.90 ERA, registering 28 strikeouts in 27.2 innings, before suffering an elbow injury on May 13, 2012.

Bueno was 1-2 with a 3.40 ERA in 23 appearances (1 start) for the Storm Chasers this season. The 5-foot-10 lefty was signed as a minor league free agent on November 17, 2011. He was originally signed by the Atlanta Braves as a non-drafted free agent in 2006.

Berry was claimed off waivers by the Royals on June 4 and designated for assignment on June 23. He has played in 9 games for the Storm Chasers, batting .194 with one homer, 4 RBI and 5 stolen bases.

— Royals Media Relations —