Royals bullpen implodes again as KC loses game to their Boston Wild Card foes 9-5

Not a good showing for the first game

The Kansas City Royals are 63-51, which is good, but against teams not named the Chicago White Sox they are only 51-50. In other words, sooner or later the Royals will need to beat good teams to secure a playoff spot. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen tonight. Against the Boston Red Sox–one of Kansas City’s main foes in the Wild Card race–the Royals bullpen dropped the ball and the offense couldn’t keep up in a 9-5 contest.

Brady Singer has struggled against lefties all year (and throughout his whole career), so the Red Sox filled up their lineup with lefties to counter him. Singer looked profoundly uncomfortable all evening. The Red Sox punctured the empty scoreboard in the second inning with consecutive singles by Dominic Smith and Nick Sogard. Then, David Hamilton doubled on a line drive down the first base line that Vinnie Pasquantino should have gotten to.

Singer wriggled out of that particular jam, but he continued to struggle and didn’t have a single clean inning all evening. His next big issue came in the sixth inning, when Sogard singled with one out. Singer managed to get the second out of the inning, but Ceddanne Rafaela blooped a single to center field and advanced to second base on a lazy throw by Kyle Isbel. Singer exited the game, having pitched 5.2 innings and striking out six Red Sox batters.

Unfortunately for Singer, the Royals bullpen blows–blows leads and just sort of in general. Angel Zerpa immediately gave up a double to Jarren Duran. That was, ah, the best part of Zerpa’s appearance, because he got an out afterwards. Zerpa couldn’t get any other additional outs in the seventh inning with a double-single-double-home run combo that gave the Red Sox an 8-2 lead.

Offensively, the Royals could get nothing going against James Paxton, which sort of tracks. Paxton is a soft-tossing vet, which is the Royals’ historical Achilles’ heel. Their two runs off Paxton came from of some vintage Royals Devil Magic sort of “put the ball in play and hope something good happens” nonsense, which is granted a very fun thing to witness. One run came from Bobby Witt Jr. hitting a single after Isbel walked and advanced to second on a fielder’s choice. The next run came from…this?

Sometimes you just gotta take what you can get, man. Michael Massey tripled to right field (well, “tripled” to right) and then came home on a lil’ swinging bunt situation from Freddy Fermin.

But when the Red Sox when up 8-2, that was just it for the Royals, who couldn’t keep up. Kansas City scored three more runs–two more in the seventh off hits from Adam Frazier and Maikel Garcia, and one more from a Vinnie Pasquantino homer. By that point, though, the Red Sox added another insurance run off Chris Stratton, and the score settled into its 9-5 final score.

Oh, and this happened. Garcia crushed a ball to center field, and this catch happened from Rafaela.

One of the worst and best catches I’ve ever seen.

Anyway, the Royals allowed 18 hits tonight and walked another pair. You’re not going to win when you allow 20 baserunners, and sure enough that’s what happens. With tonight’s loss to the Red Sox, the Royals only lead Boston by 1.5 games.