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In a back and forth affair decided by a couple of defensive miscues and some quality base running, it was Salvador Perez who stole the show. Again.

If I wore a fedora and banged out a game story on a Smith Corona typewriter, it would be tempting to lead with something about Thursday night’s Royals-Twins tilt as being “a see-saw affair.”

But this is the internet and I’m wearing out one of those damned butterfly keyboards on a laptop. So I’ll just give you a condensed, head-spinning play-by-play.

• The Twins took the lead in the top of the first.

• The Royals tied it in their half of the inning.

• The Royals took the lead in the third.

• The Twins tied it in the top of the fourth.

• The Royals scored two to take the lead in the bottom of the fourth.

• The Twins countered with two of their own in the top of the fifth.

• The Royals took the lead in the bottom of the fifth.

• The Twins tied it in the top of the seventh.

• The Royals took the lead in the bottom of the seventh.

That’s five lead changes and four ties. It was just an incredibly fun game. Unless you were from Minnesota, I suppose.

Even though the Royals were out there swinging and hitting first-pitch bombs, the game had the feel where it was more like a couple of welterweights connecting with some decent punches, neither one possessing the heft to truly put the other away. The outcome was in doubt until Mike Matheny went to his bench in the seventh. You just knew the winner would be whoever landed the final blow. And since the Royals were at home, you had to like their chances.

Stealing a run…and a win

When Carlos Santana walked to open the bottom of the seventh, Matheny summoned Jarrod Dyson to pinch run. That’s just a crazy aggressive substitution to remove your best hitter from the lineup, even that late in a game. Matheny clearly wasn’t content to wait around for the Royals offense to string some hits together, even with the heart of the order coming up. He was going all-in and playing for the win in that inning.

It worked.

Dyson swiped second and when the Twins defense channeled the Keystone Kops, he came around to score another go-ahead run.

The key in that sequence is obviously the steal. If Dyson is still on first, he probably still advances to second on the dropped fly ball. Instead, he’s at third as Celestino lollipops the throw into second and comes in for the score.

Dyson may have lost a half-step, but he’s still an insanely smart base runner. He’s always situation-aware and knows where the ball is at all times. Just a pleasure to watch on the bases.

And credit to Matheny for managing an intra-divisional game in early June like it was a postseason series in October. He sensed opportunity and he went for it.

The Salvy Perez Power Hour

Remember all that difficulty Salvador Perez hitting left-handed pitching at the start of the season? You know, when he went 0-25 and didn’t get his first hit against a southpaw until the end of April?

Scratch that.

Perez now has 16 hits in his last 33 at bats against lefties with seven home runs. That’s including the two he hit on Thursday. Starting with this one.

You’ve heard a scout rave about a player’s “easy power” before. I can’t imagine it could be any “easier” than that. It’s just pure strength to muscle a ball out of that part of the yard like that. I mean, look at the location of this pitch.

It’s a first-pitch fastball well off the plate at 91 mph. You’re really just not supposed to do that. But Perez finds a way. It’s just kind of unreal when he’s rolling like this. This one went 456 feet which was his third-longest of the year and the fifth that traveled over 430 feet.

Did I say Perez is rolling? Because he is. Here’s dinger number two.

This one was delivered with a little more velocity at 93 mph and it just caught the edge of the zone. So Perez just goes with it and rocks it into right field.

Such is the danger of a lefty (or anyone really) trying to pitch to Perez when he’s mashing. You want to throw it off the outside edge because you want him to swing and miss. But if you don’t get it far enough off the outer edge, you’re going to have problems. And Perez continues to show he’s more than willing to crush the ball anywhere. The spray chart of his dingers is just crazy impressive.

You don’t need me to tell you that Perez is a legitimate power hitter, but it’s just fantastic to see him hitting with power to all fields.

After his latest aerial assault on pitching where he’s bashed four home runs over the last two games, Perez is on pace for 42 bombs at this point. When he’s on, he’s on. It’s fun to watch.

Perez is now hitting .284/.312/.536 with a wRC+ of 132. Only Santana with a wRC+ of 134 has been more productive at the plate. Those two have formed quite a formidably duo at the top of the Royals’ lineup.

Barlow saves

Matheny continued to go for it with his aggressive use of the bullpen, using his best relievers for multiple innings on Thursday. He brought Kyle Zimmer in to relieve Kris Bubic in the fifth with runners on the corners. After requiring just nine pitches to get the two outs in the inning (one of which was a sacrifice fly that, yes, tied the game), sent him back out for the sixth. Zimmer was working his fastball/slider combo well. He was jumping ahead in the count which meant the mistakes he made in the zone weren’t hit especially hard.

After the Royals took the lead in the seventh, Matheny turned to Scott Barlow. Look, this dude is just incredibly filthy.

The slider was tight, the fastball was popping and the Twins just weren’t expecting to see that curve thrown for a strike. According to Baseball Savant, his spin rate was up from his normal average in 2021 on the fastball and the slider. That helped offset a slight dip in velocity. As the innings pile up, that will be something to watch. On Thursday, it meant a fastball that rode up in the zone and a slider with a lot of depth.

He also mixed in a few curves.

Barlow threw four curves resulting in three called strikes and one foul. They weren’t especially strong offerings, but it just seemed to catch the Twins’ batters off guard.

Barlow recorded a six-out save for the second time this year. He’s the only pitcher in the majors to have a pair of saves like that. The good news is, he required only 23 pitches to get those six outs. He’s probably available for an inning on Friday if necessary and should definitely be good to let it rip on Saturday.

The trouble with the curve

Kris Bubic didn’t have his best stuff on the night. As he said in the postgame, he really needs that third pitch, the curve, to be effective to allow the fastball/change combo to play. He was missing badly on the glove side, so it was easy for the Twins batters to spit on the pitch, enabling them to key on the change or the fastball.

The lone curve in the zone was an 0-1 hanger to Jorge Polanco in the fifth that he lined for a double at 105.1 mph off the bat.

Bubic said he felt like he got a little “change happy” later in the game and did throw the pitch 54 percent of the time. He had a 38 percent CSW% on the pitch. Eight were put in play, three for hits, including the Josh Donaldson double to lead off the fifth. Bubic did have some fine moments with the pitch, as witnessed by this sword from Donaldson in the third on a strikeout.

That whiff was the end of an interesting sequence. The first time Bubic faced Donaldson, he threw three fastballs with the final one leaving the yard. The next time around, Bubic when completely offspeed, throwing seven pitches total before climbing the ladder for the whiff.

Ultimately, he wasn’t able to finish five. The potential was there, he kept his team in the game, but it was largely an unsatisfying performance.

Mondesi update

Matheny had this to say before the game on Thursday about Adalberto Mondesi:

“I think today is an important day for us to kind of get a feel for where Mondi’s going to be.... He was excited to come in and kind of use today as an opportunity to give us a better idea of where we’re going to go. There’s a chance he could be in the lineup today (Thursday) if things go well. If not we’re going to have to pause and make sure we’re taking the necessary time.”

The Royals, as you are aware, are very tight-lipped about player injuries. What we can infer from Matheny’s comment above and the fact Mondesi was not in the lineup was that his pregame test of the hamstring did not go well. So now the chances for what would be a best-case scenario where Mondesi returns quickly have decreased.

But since this is the Royals, it wouldn’t be surprising for the best-case scenario to unfold and we see him in the lineup tonight. We need more updates!

Roster moves

Prior to the game, the Royals announced they optioned Edward Olivares back to Triple-A and recalled Ronald Bolaños. Olivares appeared in three games, hitting .364/.417/.364. He was scorching hot for the Storm Chasers before his 2021 MLB debut, hitting .395/.473/.654.

It’s disappointing that Olivares was sent down, but it was a necessary move once it was certain that Jorge Soler would avoid a turn to the IL. He was back in the lineup in right field on Thursday and went 0-3 with a walk. And with the Royals getting set for two-plus weeks of baseball without a scheduled off day, and with Danny Duffy still on the IL, they needed to add another arm to the mix.

Bolaños has made four starts for the Storm Chasers this year, posting a 3.31 ERA in 16.1 innings. He’s struck out 16 and walked 10. Figure Bolaños to potentially get the call as the fifth starter when needed. Until then, he’s probably on stand-by as a long reliever. I figure it’s a proactive move to get another arm to Kansas City immediately and to continue to keep Olivares raking by getting him back to action as soon as possible.

We will see Olivares back in Kansas City soon.

Central issues

• Tigers 1, White Sox 4

Five solo home runs were hit in this one. As you can probably tell by the score, the White Sox hit four of them.

Yoán Moncada, Jake Lamb, Yasmani Grandal and Tim Anderson had the honors. Lance Lynn went six innings, striking out six. His only blemish was a dinger allowed to Willi Castro.

Up next

The Royals finally set their rotation for the remainder of the series.

• Friday — Matt Shoemaker vs Brad Keller

• Saturday — José Berríos vs Mike Minor

• Sunday — Michael Pineda vs Brady Singer

That would set up Bolaños to start on Monday as the Royals open their west coast road trip against the Angels.