Sunday’s game started out with an encouraging first inning. Maikel Garcia singled up the middle and then two batters later Vinnie Pasquantino also singled to center where Victor Scott II fumbled the ball and allowed Garcia to advance to third. Salvador Perez then picked up his first RBI of the night by hitting a sac fly to left. Stephen Kolek took the mound for the bottom half of the inning and induced three groundball outs, which would be foreshadowing for how his day was going to go. One inning down
and Kansas City had a 1-0 lead.
Most of the rest of the afternoon turned into a pitchers’ duel. Andre Pallante needed 21 pitches in that first frame, but then went two outs into the 7th and only needed 99 total to get there. He did have one more little hiccup along the way when Salvy deposited his first pitch of the 4th into the seats to double the Royal lead and put The Captain just 7 HR behind George Brett for the Royals career home run mark.
The Royals did scatter some hits throughout, but Perez was the main offensive force for the team, which could mean he is starting to heat up finally. In fact, the Cardinals never got him out after the sac fly. He hit the homer, then singled in the 6th, and had a nine pitch walk in the 8th. If Salvy can be patient like he was in the 8th, it would greatly benefit this offense.
Stephen Kolek was more dominant than Pallante. His final line was a solid 6.1IP, 4H, BB, 3K, but it felt even better than that somehow. He is typically a groundball pitcher, over 50% of balls put in play by him are on the ground so far in his career, which would have put him in the top 10 for qualified starters last year in groundball rate. Today almost everything was on the ground. He had 13 of those ground balls turn into 14 outs thanks to one of them being this pretty double play.
That was a very nice outing that was turned over to Daniel Lynch IV in the 7th. Lynch quickly took care of the last 2 outs in the seventh and then went ahead and took care of the 8th as well. It looked like this would be a save situation for Lucas Erceg, thought the offense tried to create some insurance in the top of the 9th.
Justin Bruihl had come on to finish the Royals off in the 8th and continued on into the 9th. Isaac Collins lead off the inning with a single and was followed by a Lane Thomas walk. Bruihl was pulled for Matt Pushard who then beaned Nick Loftin in the hand while he was trying to bunt. Loaded bases with no outs is generally a pretty good situation for an offense to be in. Unfortunately, Kyle Isbel struck out and then Garcia grounded to third for a double play, so it was time for the save attempt.
Erceg, sans lights out due to the road day game, got the job done. He did allow a walk to Nolan Gorman and a loud line drive out to Cesar Prieto, but no runners got past first base. Four batters, three outs, one save. That puts an end to the Royal’s six game losing streak and sends them back to KC after a disappointing 1-5 road trip.
At home, the Royals will have 9 games against the Red Sox, Mariners, and Yankees. With Boston and Seattle off to slow starts on the season, like almost the entire AL, that is not as daunting as it might have looked going into the year. So far, the home cooking has been good, the Royals need to right the ship by taking care of business in Kauffman.
