Well, I’m not sure what I expected. The Royals stars (Witt, Cags) were showing out both offensively and defensively, but it wasn’t enough to overcome the moribund bullpen in a 6-5 loss to the Dodgers that was full of punch-counterpunch.
The 6th inning was the key part. The Royals held a 3-2 lead and Noah Cameron, who had pitched pretty well up to this point, gave up a few hard-hit balls in a row to put runners on second and third with two outs. John Schreiber came in and promptly blew the game by
walking Kyle Tucker and giving up a weak line drive down the right field line just beyond Cags’ outstretched glove. All three runners scored to give the Dodgers the lead. Sigh.
The Royals counterpunched with a Kyle Isbel two-run homer in the seventh inning to bring the game back to even-steven at 5-5, but Alex Lange gave up two singles in the bottom of the seventh to relinquish the lead for good. It goes as two runs total charged to Schreiber and Lange, but I don’t think Cameron really deserved those runs being charged to him.
It’s a shame. Facing Tarik Skubal, the Royals position players put up a good fight.
In the first inning, in his first-ever at-bat against Skubal (really?), Cags fouled off four pitches to hit a grounder that squeaked through the middle to score Witt from second (Cags extended his hitting streak to 9 games with that hit).
In the third inning, once again Cags came up to bat and continued his torrid second-half power show. After a Nick Loftin double, Cags was down 0-2 in the count. Then he ripped a 110.8mph line drive home run to push the lead to 3-0. It was beautiful – one of those rising liners that seemed to just keep elevating as it went. Skubal embodied the grimace emoji as soon as the ball left the bat. The Royals chased Skubal after only five innings pitched in which he gave up three runs. I think if you’re facing Skubal, you take that every time.
The star on the other side, Shohei Ohtani, then counter-punched with a deep hit of his own after seeing Jac hit the dinger in the third. It was just short of a homer, but with Hunter Feduccia on second after a double, Ohtani got a bread-basket changeup from Cameron and blasted it to the gap. Freddie Freeman followed with a single to score Ohtani.
On the defensive side, throughout the game, Witt flashed the leather in the deep hole, like in the bottom of the second when he ranged to his right and fired a perfect throw to Massey to allow him to turn the double play. Witt was all over the place. I think he even caught a pop fly in left-center later in the game. Rex was talking about his hands so much that my wife wanted to file a complaint with HR. Fair. He was ridiculous.
It felt like a good effort from the boys. Well..at least it was a good effort from half the team.
The Royals fall to 49-71. The Dodgers are 71-48. They play again tomorrow at 9:10pm US Central time. Michael Wacha will pitch against Blake Snell.
