The Kansas City Royals (36-39) and the Minnesota Twins (34-40) will begin their weekend series with a Thursday night matchup. The game will stream live on MLB.com with a paid subscription.
Kansas City's Jeremy Gurthrie (7-4) will look to improve from a disappointing performance in his last outing against the Chicago White Sox. He allowed six runs over 2 1/3 innings during a 9-1 loss Friday. It was the shortest outing for Guthrie since July 7, 2009 against Baltimore in which he pitched the same amount of innings.
"It was one of those nights when he didn't have much going for him," said Royals manager Ned Yost about last week's poor effort.
Guthrie, however, has fared well against the Twins, having already beaten Minnesota twice this season and holding a 6-2 career record and 3.36 ERA against them during nine career starts. He posted a 2.18 ERA and three wins in career appearances in Minnesota, including two at Target Field, which opened in 2010.
The Twins are looking to improve after a disappointing road trip in which they lost three of four games. Minnesota jumped out to an early lead, but lost their most recent game to Miami 5-3.
"You jump out like that with three runs quick and you think, 'Oh, here we go,' and nothing happened after that," manager Ron Gardenhire said. "We couldn't put them away. We had men out there. We needed another big hit early to put them away at least open the lead up and maybe have one of those kind of games, but to their credit they kept battling back."
Minnesota will start Samuel Deduno (3-2), who is coming off a six inning losing effort in which he allowed four earned runs. Deduno did record the only win against Kansas City this season during a 3-0 victory on June 4.
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