The Royals dropped the rubber game against the Houston Astros Thursday night. Despite scoring first, Kansas City falls 6-2 as Houston homered five times.
The game started off promising as the Royals loaded the bases in the top of the first on just nine pitches—two four-pitch walks to Carter Jensen and Bobby Witt Jr. before Houston opener Miguel Ullola plunked Jac Caglianone in the foot. Up came tonight’s cleanup hitter, Maikel Garcia, with a chance to do some real damage.
Real damage he did not inflict.
Instead, on the second pitch of the at-bat—Ullola’s last pitch of the evening—Garcia grounded into a run-scoring double-play. The Royals led 1-0 but the air had been let out of the balloon. Michael Massey couldn’t score Cags from third with two outs.
Houston wasted no time tying the game as Jeremy Pena led off the bottom of the first with his 20th home run of the season. In the bottom of the second, Daulton Varsho’s 12th homer gave Houston the lead it would never relinquish.
Before the Royals collected their first hit of the evening, LaMonte Wade Jr. (4) and Yordan Alvarez (40) also homered. Taylor Trammell (8) added another in the bottom of the 8th.
In total, the Astros hit more home runs tonight than the Royals had basehits.
That’s never a good sign.
Props to Jensen, though, as he remains the only good thing about this woeful offense recently. In addition to his walk, he broke up Houston’s combined no-hitter with a sharp single in the sixth before adding another in the eighth inning, this time driving in John Rave, who’d doubled, to make it a 5-2 game. With Witt up next and Cags after him, things didn’t look completely dire.
But then Witt struck out on a wicked slider nowhere close to the strike zone. Astros pitcher Bryan Abreu, who only faced Witt, made the Royals shortstop just look silly.
That was pretty much it. Trammell’s home made it 6-2, and then Josh Hader came in to lock it down. Can you believe this is already Hader’s 10th season? I shouldn’t have looked that up. It made me feel old.
Hader retired the Royals in order, getting Nick Loftin—pinch-hitting for Cags for some reason—to fly out to right, Garcia to ground out to second, and Michael Massey to ground out to first. Bingo bango bongo, ballgame.
The loss drops the Royals to 67-86. The Astros improve to 77-76, 1/2 game up on the Texas Rangers in the division. As of this writing, the Rangers lead the Red Sox, 3-0, in the seventh inning, so it looks like these two Lonestar teams will continue duking it out for the West.
Before ending this, here’s how Royals starter Seth Lugo fared: five innings pitched, eight hits allowed, four homers given up, one walk, five strikeouts. He’s now 7-9 on the year with an ugly 5.06 ERA. If he didn’t have guaranteed money lined up for 2027, one would be forgiven for thinking this was the end of his line.
Alas, he will return.
