'Why not?': High socks help Maeda deal

Kenta Maeda didn’t think that he’d been pitching very well through his first 12 starts of the season for the Twins.

The 33-year-old right-hander came into Sunday sporting a 5.56 ERA, he’d given up 11 home runs in 56 2/3 innings and he hadn’t pitched through the sixth inning since April 7. With his struggles only heightening the overall struggles the Twins have had in 2021, Maeda knew he needed to change something.

What change did he ultimately make? High socks.

“I did wear high socks during practice, and I looked good,” Maeda said through translator Daichi Sekizaki. “So why not?”

If the dark-blue high socks Maeda wore on the mound actually had an effect on his performance against the Royals on Sunday afternoon, he might want to keep them around. Maeda allowed two hits over six scoreless innings, and he recorded a season-high 10 strikeouts as he led Minnesota to a 6-2 win over Kansas City in the series finale at Kauffman Stadium.

“That is the Kenta Maeda that we’ve seen a lot of,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. “Shoot, all the way around, no matter which way you look at this, it’s a marvelous outing.”

In losses to the Royals in the first two games of the series, the Twins were the ones who struck first. On Friday, it was a three-run first inning that put them ahead. On Saturday, it was a two-run fourth.

However, those early leads quickly evaporated, as Minnesota starters J. A. Happ (five earned runs in 4 1/3 innings on Friday) and Griffin Jax (six earned runs in five innings on Saturday) were ousted from the game after multirun innings by Kansas City. On Sunday, Maeda made sure the opposition wouldn’t make it 3-for-3.

A leadoff walk to Royals second baseman Whit Merrifield and two singles in the second were the lone blemishes on Maeda’s day. When the Twins took a 1-0 lead on a third-inning RBI single by Trevor Larnach, that was all Maeda as he thoroughly dominated the Royals’ lineup.

Maeda kicked off the bottom of the third with a swinging strikeout of Merrifield, and he then retired the next 11 batters through the end of the sixth before he was removed with a five-run lead in the seventh.

Maeda struck out a season-high 10 and his 32.1 percent whiff rate was his fourth-highest mark of the season. And just to emphasize how often Maeda was missing bats, of his 10 punchouts, nine came on swinging strikes.

“I think all of my pitches were working today,” Maeda said. “Including last outing and then just throughout the season, I've lost my command here and there, allowing multiple walks. And I think today was just getting in the right frame of mind, and aggressively attacking the strike zone is what led to the result today.”

Maeda’s splitter was his most-used pitch on Sunday. He threw it 33 percent of the time, recording a 32 percent whiff rate and four strikeouts.

But it was the velocity on his fastball that had been a cause of concern after his last outing, when it fell below 90 mph. Against the Royals, Maeda’s four-seamer finished off two of his 10 strikeouts, and the average velocity was up to 91.7 mph -- right where he wants it to be.

“Keeping guys honest by throwing his heater more today,” Royals right fielder Ryan O’Hearn said. “I faced him in a rehab stint when he was in St. Paul, and he hardly threw the fastball. But today he threw it a lot more. He caught guys in-between. One of those days that was tough to not be able to scratch some runs until the ninth.”

A sixth-inning home run from Max Kepler and seventh-inning long balls from Jorge Polanco and Alex Kirilloff helped Minnesota pull away, but it was Maeda’s impressive performance that made it the Twins’ game to lose.

“When your guys go out there and step on the mound, pitch that way, it sets a tone for everyone over the course of the game,” Baldelli said. “Our guys did not let up, really, at any point.”