Minnesota Twins fans continue to clamor for pitching prospect Kyle Gibson to make his major league debut.
Samuel Deduno is temporarily silencing those talks.
For the second straight outing, the enigmatic right-hander dazzled on the mound, holding the Kansas City Royals scoreless for six innings in Minnesota's 3-0 win Tuesday at Kauffman Stadium. For Deduno, it was his second win in as many starts, during which he's allowed just one run on eight total hits.
"That's exactly what you see out of Sammy," said Twins manager Ron Gardenhire. "He's got great stuff. The ball's moving all over the place, in and out. … The bottom line is he gave us a great chance to win a ball game."
Deduno wasn't given a lot of room for error Tuesday. Designated hitter Ryan Doumit hit a solo homer in the top of the fourth inning to get the Twins on the board, and Minnesota added a pair of runs in the top of the fifth. But that would be all Deduno had to work with in terms of run support.
As it turned out, he only needed one run.
Deduno allowed just four hits and struck out five Royals batters in Tuesday's win. Even with his breaking pitches darting all over the strike zone, Deduno limited the damage to just two walks in six innings. He avoided trouble in the first inning after a two-out walk to Billy Butler resulted in two runners on. But Deduno got Lorenzo Cain to ground out to end the inning.
Later in the game, Deduno worked around a leadoff double by Butler. He struck out Cain, induced a fly ball off the bat of Mike Moustakas and got Salvador Perez to ground out for the final out of the inning.
After six scoreless innings, Deduno took the mound again for the seventh despite having already thrown 99 pitches. After a six-pitch at-bat resulted in a leadoff double by Cain, Deduno was lifted for left-hander Brian Duensing.
"His pitch count was up," Gardenhire said of the decision to take out Deduno. "Honestly, the way he was throwing the ball, I was hoping that he would run right through that inning. But (after) the leadoff double, I didn't want it to get any deeper than that."
Minnesota's bullpen shut the door after Deduno's scoreless six innings to help him earn his second win. He lowered his season ERA to 3.44 despite a rough first outing in which he allowed six runs in 5 1/3 innings on May 24 against Detroit.
When the Twins needed help for the starting rotation in late May, they called up Deduno from Triple-A Rochester instead of Gibson. At the time, the 29-year-old Deduno — who starred for the Dominican Republic in the World Baseball Classic — was pitching well for the Red Wings after returning from an injury that forced him to begin the year in the minors. In three starts for Rochester, Deduno had a 2.70 ERA with 17 strikeouts in 16 2/3 innings.
That was enough for Minnesota to call him back up to the majors, where he's now made three starts this season. Performances like the one Deduno had Tuesday have certainly helped to justify that decision.
"When he throws strikes, we know his stuff is really good," said Twins left fielder Josh Willingham. "The key for him is throwing strikes, and he did that for most of the game tonight. When he can get ahead of hitters, it forces them to swing the bats. His ball moves all over the place and it's hard to square it up, so I think that's what we saw tonight.
FOX Sports North's Kevin Gorg contributed to this report.
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