The Kansas City Royals are a temple: ancient, crumbling, slowly succumbing to time, brick by brick tumbling off the ledge as the season marches forward. Tonight, in their return to Kauffman Stadium, another brick fell off the ol’ block as the Royals lost 10-4 to the Tampa Bay Rays.
I guess the game started well enough. In the bottom of the first inning, Carter Jensen led off with a first-pitch home run to right field. It was a delight and further extended his hitting streak.
That
wasn’t the only dong of the night. Bobby Witt Jr., finally back in the field for the last few days, crushed a pitch of his own–a hanging sweeper, which he sent into left field. It was one of three hits on the night, and the first of two homers.
You might have noticed a teeney-weeney eency problem in the scorebug of that clip: by that point, the Rays were leading the Royals 6-3 in just the third inning. That’s because Tampa Bay was in the process of sending Noah Cameron to the showers early. Cameron didn’t last through the fourth inning, and most of the time, forcing the bullpen to handle that many innings is a death blow.
Tonight was included in “most of the time,” here. Connor Seabold gave up a pair of runs and allowed three baserunners to reach in two thirds of an inning, and then he left the game with “right lat tightness.” Great. Eric Cerantola entered the game and walked a hilarious six batters en route to another pair of runs allowed. Piled onto the six charged to Cameron and, well, the game was out of reach.
At 35-51, the Royals are officially the worst team in the American League and the second-worst team in Major League Baseball. I would be angry about it, but expending emotional energy on this sorry excuse for an MLB team would be a mistake. Fortunately, the US Men’s National Team plays tomorrow, so we can divert our eyes from this nonsense for a bit.
