MINNEAPOLIS -- After Cole Ragans got the wind knocked out of him by a line drive that hit him in the diaphragm and loaded the bases for the Twins in the fifth inning Wednesday afternoon, the Royals' infield gathered with manager Matt Quatraro and head athletic trainer Kyle Turner on the mound to see if Ragans was OK.

He let everyone know there was no way he was coming out of the game at that point. Second baseman Adam Frazier agreed.

“[Frazier] said, ‘Get up there and go,’” Quatraro said. “And clearly [Ragans] wanted to. He was at a spot in the game where he knew that’s where the game swung right there.”

The moment encapsulated just how much Ragans means to the Royals -- and how much they rely on their young ace in important games and situations. Ragans got Royce Lewis, who entered the at-bat a .571 hitter with the bases loaded, to ground out and end the threat.

Kansas City rode that to a 4-1 win over the Twins at Target Field, with Ragans firing seven innings of one-run ball, striking out eight and issuing zero walks.

Following two lackluster losses against the team they’re chasing in the standings this week, the Royals avoided what would have been just their second series sweep of the season and looked more like themselves on Wednesday with the start they got -- and desperately needed -- from Ragans.

“Any day he takes the bump is a little bit of an, ‘All right, let’s go,’ mindset,” Vinnie Pasquantino said of Ragans. “Especially against a team that we’ve struggled against so much. For him to set the tone like that, and then have it keep going, that’s massive.”

After Kyle Isbel hit his fourth RBI in his past five games to get the Royals on the board in the second inning, homers helped them build their lead. Paul DeJong finished his day a triple away from the cycle, and his 20th homer of the season was a 435-foot no-doubter in the sixth inning.

“I wanted to be in there and help my team win today, and especially for this 12 o’clock game after we lost the two,” DeJong said. “I knew we had to have a little bit extra intensity today.”

Bobby Witt Jr. hit an elevated fastball -- an out-of-the-zone elevated fastball -- to the visiting bullpen for his 24th home run of the season. The 97 mph fastball was 4.07 feet above the ground, the highest pitch hit for a homer by a Royals player since 2008 when tracking became available.

“I think when you’re on time, you can do a lot of good things,” Witt said. “So just trying to be on time with the pitch and just let things happen.”

Ragans needed just 32 pitches in three innings and retired the first 11 batters he faced. Carlos Santana eliminated the no-hitter, perfect game and shutout in one sweet swing, sending a middle-middle changeup to the left-field bleachers with two outs in the fourth inning.

That was it for the Twins’ offense, which whiffed 34.6% of the time against Ragans. The lefty’s velocity was up from his previous starts because of a mechanical adjustment he’s worked on, and he ended the sixth by reaching back for a 98.6 mph fastball, his hardest pitch of the day, to strike out Ryan Jeffers.

“It’s starting to get back to where it was,” Ragans said. “Everything feels great. … I wanted to attack, go at them, try to be a little unpredictable at times.”

When Ragans was facing Lewis in the fifth inning, it was clear Lewis was looking for a first-pitch fastball, evidenced by the ugly swing Ragans got on a first-pitch changeup.

“The way he swung, it seemed like he was sitting dead-red heater,” Ragans said. “If I would have given it to him, he would have been all over it. The previous at-bat, I got him on two heaters and went to the changeup, so in that situation, he’s probably going to be selling out to a heater, in my opinion, because he’s really good at it. So [I was] trying to keep him off balance.”

Kansas City got an insurance run in the seventh off Jhoan Duran, the Twins closer who needed to pitch after having five days off, with Pasquantino’s double coming after pinch-runner Maikel Garcia stole second and third base.

That buoyed Ragans into the seventh, when he set the Twins down in order to finish his outing as the stopper the Royals needed.

“Every time we step out there, we want to win, just as bad as any other one,” Ragans said.