Tonight, the Kansas City Royals played an “Uno reverse” card on their opponents, the Athletics: most of the time this season, it’s been the boys in blue who have blown the ninth inning. Not tonight. On this eve, the Royals scored a trio of runs in the bottom of the ninth inning to claim a victory to an excited crowd at Kauffman Stadium.
The Royals had played a quiet game offensively up to that point. Through the first six innings, the Royals barely had any baserunners. In the seventh inning, the Twin
Italian Stallions of Jac Caglianone and Vinnie Pasquantino doubled to put one run on the board. This, despite the A’s sending a parade of bullpen arms all night.
On the pitching side, the Royals also basically deployed a bullpen game. Daniel Lynch IV made his longest start of the year, going four innings. It was also his best start, as he only gave up one run. Mason Black followed him up and pitched shakily, giving up five baserunners and two runs in his three innings. Fortunately, that’s all that the Royals game up—Alex Lange and Carlos Duran combined to pitch a scoreless eighth and ninth innings.
Ah, the ninth inning: let’s focus on that. It started somewhat ominously for the A’s, with Vinnie Pasquantino just barely missing a home run over the shortened right field porch. Then, all hell broke loose for the homeless Athletics. Salvador Perez immediately reached on a catcher’s interference from Jonah Heim, and Michael Massey singled. With Salvy now in scoring position, John Rave came off the bench to pinch run for him.
Next up was Carter Jensen, who drew a walk. And against left-handed Hogan Harris, Tyler Tolbert pinch hit for Kyle Isbel. He shot a single to the shortstop hole to tie the game.
Isaac Collins lined out for the second out of the inning, but with the game tied and a runner in scoring position Bob called game—a bloop single.
For all of the games that Matt Quatraro pulled every lever and it didn’t work, this was a counterweight: pinch hitting for Isbel worked. Pinch running for Salvy worked. Turning to Lange and Duran to hold a manageable 3-1 deficit worked. That’s nice. Let’s do more of that.
