Kansas City Royals lose third straight for first time this year as bullpen backfires
Kansas City Royals reliever Josh Staumont wouldn’t second-guess his outing. He wasn’t pleased with the results, but he showed no intention of dissecting every pitch, nor did he see the necessity to “reinvent the wheel.”
Staumont entered the night having allowed only one run in 12 appearances and 14 1/3 innings this season, but the Cleveland Indians scored three runs against him in 2/3 of an inning to take control of a tie game in the eighth inning.
When it was all said and done, the Royals watched the Indians score the final seven runs and win 7-3 in front of an announced crowd of 5,997 on Tuesday night at Kauffman Stadium.
The Royals (16-12) have lost three games in a row. At best they can salvage a split of the four-game series with the Indians, who will have reigning AL Cy Young Award Shane Bieber scheduled to start on Wednesday night.
“Everything is super-easy to pick apart when it doesn’t go well,” Staumont said. “But if we do that and we get the outs, everyone is slapping people on the back. It’s baseball. We’re going to show up tomorrow and we’re going to compete just like we did today.
“There’s 162 games for a reason, so none of us here are super-worried about this. It’s the process. We’re a family. You’re going to have ups and downs. When you zoom out, it’s a lot smaller. One game doesn’t make or break your season.”
After he froze Jordan Luplow on a third strike to end the seventh, Staumont started the eighth with a strikeout of Indians offensive catalyst Jose Ramirez. Then Staumont got ahead of cleanup hitter Franmil Reyes when he swung at back-to-back curveballs, but Reyes held off on four consecutive curveballs to draw a one-out walk.
“I don’t think he’d seen five or six curveballs in a row,” Royals catcher Salvador Perez said of the pitch selection. “So I think it was the right time. He threw some pretty good curveballs. He didn’t chase. He chased the first two, and after that he was patient and he got the walk. I think they were good pitches.”
After a wild pitch allowed Reyes to move into scoring position, Harold Ramirez shot a ball down the right-field line that stayed fair and got into the corner for an RBI double to give the Indians their first lead of the game.
“We go 0-2, we’re going to throw some good pitches,” Staumont said. “We’re going to work the batter like we’re going to work him. I trust Salvy, and we’re going to just go after him. The walk was frustrating, but at the same time we have had a lot of fastballs with him kind of late in counts, even counts, (that have) been pushed the other way. He did it the other night.
“We stuck with that curveball. I really don’t have too many qualms about tonight.”
Josh Naylor followed with an RBI single through the left side with the infield defense shifted the other way.
The third run charged to Staumont came when Naylor scored on Jake Bauers’ pinch-hit two-run home run off of reliever Tyler Zuber.
Perez went 2 for 4 with a home run, while Hunter Dozier went 2 for 3 with a walk and two doubles. Michael Taylor and Andrew Benintendi had two hits apiece.
The Royals took a 3-0 lead on Perez’s seventh home run of the season, a 460-foot blast into the fountains on the left-center field side of the batter’s eye, in the fifth inning. The Royals had just two hits in the final four innings.
The Indians got all three runs back in the sixth after Royals starting pitcher Mike Minor loaded the bases on a Cesar Hernandez double, a walk by Luplow and a Jose Ramirez infield single.
With reliever Greg Holland having taken over for Minor in the sixth, shortstop Nicky Lopez committed a fielding error on a chopper that allowed two runs to score. The next batter, Harold Ramirez, hit an RBI single that tied the score 3-3.
Minor allowed three runs on three hits and three walks in 5 1/3 innings.
“Minor was really good today, really good,” Royals manager Mike Matheny said. “He just got into a jam, a tough spot with a real good hitter at the plate. Our bullpen has done such an incredible job of getting us out jams, getting us out of messes. We’re going to have to have times where different components of our game pick up other guys that are carrying us. We’re going to have to keep making plays. We’re going to have to also keep adding on offensively.”
