Tigers repay big inning late, Royals lose 6-5
Kansas City was winning until a well-rested Chris Stratton came on to pitch.
In today’s game thread, I alluded to the fact that Chris Stratton pitches worse when he has had more rest. I suggested the Royals pitch him tonight to prevent that from becoming a problem. Unfortunately, it turns out that two days’ rest was already too many for the Royals’ reliever who ended up giving up five runs in the bottom of the seventh, capped up by a three-run home run to pinch-hitter Matt Vierling.
Prior to that, the game had been going pretty well for Kansas City. Brady Singer turned in five innings of one-run ball. He struck out six and walked three but also threw 93 pitches. The Royals got on the board in a hurry when Maikel Garcia led off with a single, went to third on a Bobby Witt Jr. single and scored on a Vinnie Pasquantino sacrifice fly before Salvador Perez drove in his AL-leading 26th run of the season in only the team’s 28th game.
That also allowed him to pass Mike Sweeney on the all-time Royals’ RBI leader list with 838 RBIs. He’s only 758 shy of the all-time team lead held by, who else, George Brett.
In the second inning, the Royals took advantage of a pair of Tigers errors to put runners at first and second with no one out. Kyle Isbel immediately grounded into a double play but another Garcia single drove in the team’s third run.
Angel Zerpa pitched a scoreless sixth and it seemed like the team might be home-free as Chris Stratton has been quite good, John Schreiber could have pitched the eighth, and James McArthur would have been expected to close it out. Unfortunately, Stratton’s issues with being over-rested came back to bite the team.
Matt Sauer was given the eighth inning and escaped without making things any worse. The Royals tried to rally in the ninth of Tigers closer Jason Foley when Michael Massey led things off with a clean single to left, Dairon Blanco hit an infield single, and Kyle Isbel just missed an infield single of his own. Massey scored on a Garcia ground out and then Witt singled to score Blanco and put the tying run on base. Sadly, Vinnie Pasquantino’s fly ball to centerfield was insufficient to get the game tied up.
The Royals fall to 17-11 but entering tonight’s action they had a 62.2% chance to make the playoffs per Baseball Reference and a 36.9% chance per FanGraphs. They’ve also still got a chance to win the series tomorrow when Michael Wacha will face off against Tigers’ ace Tarik Skubal at 12:40 PM CT.