Well, if you were hoping for a miracle winning streak to start tonight for the Royals, you’ll have to keep hoping for another day. That was…not good.
The Royals tallied only seven hits all game, while the Phillies racked up 10 hits against just Lorenzen in the first three-plus innings. They finished with 14 hits total.
The Royals opened the scoring in the first inning pretty quickly. Witt hit a little flare up the middle for a single and stole second for his 36th stolen base of the season. That turned
out to be pretty important. With two outs and Maikel Garcia up, Witt would be running on contact. Garcia reached on an outside pitch and pulled another little flare into left field. Witt scored pretty easily for the first run of the game.
The Royals hardly did anything else on offense the rest of the game.
In the second inning, Salvador Perez pulled a catcher Jim Edmonds and caught a foul bunt over his shoulder (catcher version means he didn’t dive). Nifty little play that got an out with Lorenzen in trouble (having given up a walk and a double off the wall). Unfortunately, Lorenzen could not induce a double play with two men on and one out. Bryson Stott singled to load the bases, and then Rafael Marchán hit a sac fly to deep right field to score the Phillies’ first run and even the score. Lorenzen was able to strike out Harrison Bader to end the threat before more damage could be done.
Lorenzen looked wild and like he did not have his best stuff. Despite three strikeouts in the first two innings, he was all over the place. It bit him in the third inning. Badly. Schwarber walked to lead off, and then Lorenzen threw a meaty sinker that just was not quite low enough to Bryce Harper. He did not miss – two-run homer. Brandon Marsh tripled. With the infield in, Otto Kemp squeaked a grounder past a diving Witt to make it 4-1.
The game never really got any better. The Royals plated one more run in the seventh inning with some small ball, but the Phillies had six runs at that point. Small ball won’t get the job done. The Phillies scored two more runs on back-to-back-to-back doubles in the fourth (which knocked out Lorenzen) and a two-run homer in the seventh to make it eight total runs.
Lorenzen finished with six runs given up on 10 hits in only three complete innings, as he never recorded an out in the fourth. The Royals offense didn’t have it. Against Walker Buehler, they just kept skying popups for easy outs. He was living at the top of the zone, and the Royals did nothing about it.
This offense just isn’t going to get it done for any chance at the playoffs. At this point, I’m more just hoping for signs of life in the final few games of the season, especially from Cags. I’d also love at least 82 wins.
The Royals drop to 74-74, back to .500. They sit 5.5 games behind the Mariners, with the Guardians and Rangers between them and the Royals.
They’ll play again on Saturday at 5:05pm US Central time.
