COMMENTARY

Bad inning dooms the Royals

There’s not much to say about the Royals’ humiliating 15-1 loss to Cleveland, other than to say it was humiliating, and it will be interesting to see how Royals manager Trey Hillman responds. The Royals have lost five in a row now, and they did everything wrong on Tuesday, and you get the feeling that Hillman will have to do something. Hold a team meeting. Send someone down. Pick today’s lineup out of a hat. Something.

This is the powerless feeling. The Royals had a little fun in the first three weeks of the season. They played sound baseball. They did all the little things. They got great pitching from their exciting young pitchers Brian Bannister and Zack Greinke. They made just three errors in the first 17 games, and they had a winning record even with the lowest scoring offense in the American League.

Well, that’s ended now. The Royals are floundering. And this is the first real challenge of Hillman’s major-league career. Tuesday night, the Royals did so many things wrong offensively, defensively, strategically, it probably makes sense to just focus on one. So, let’s look at starter Gil Meche’s fourth inning.

Meche has struggled with his command early this year. Last April, he came out of camp locked in, focused — after his first nine starts he was 3-1 with a 1.91 ERA. He was really challenging hitters, throwing strikes, pitching with confidence and a bit of righteous rage, in part because so many people doubted him after the Royals gave him big money.

It has been different this year. He’s had some good innings here and there, but he’s drifted. He came into the game with a 1-2 record and a 6.08 ERA. He retired the side in order in the first and looked like he would be tough.

Then it all collapsed. The Royals were trailing 3-0 entering the fourth inning. Let’s look at the fateful fourth inning using the magic of MLB.com’s pitch-by-pitch report.

He began by facing Cleveland shortstop Jhonny Peralta. He got two strikes on Peralta, and then he threw a pretty good curveball. Peralta stayed with it and rifled a single to center field. That’s just a good hitter hitting a goof pitch.

Next batter was Cleveland’s Asdrubal Cabrera. Again, Meche started him off with two strikes. One thing that Meche is able to do when he’s pitching well is put batters away when he has them down two strikes. Last year, batters hit .180 against him after facing an 0-2 count. But this time, after a little battle, he threw a 91-mph fastball that was too good, and Cabrera rifled it to right field for a base hit.

Now, you could see Meche getting a little frustrated. He appeared to stomp around the mound for a second. It’s tough out there when you’re not making good pitches. Next batter was Franklin Gutierrez. For some reason, third baseman Alex Gordon — who made his first error of the season Tuesday and really botched up another play — was playing back. Gutierrez laid down a good bunt, Gordon did not get there in time, he made a poor throw, and the bases were loaded.

And now you could really see Meche’s frustration. This is when it’s tough being a major-league pitcher, when nothing is going right, when the crowd has turned on you, when there’s someone warming up in the bullpen. Royals pitching coach Bob McClure visited the mound. It’s hard to imagine what he said.

Cleveland’s Casey Blake was next. Meche started him off with a fastball off the plate. He then threw his cutter, and it was also a ball. Now, it was 2-0, a hitter’s pitch, and everyone in the park sensed what was about to happen. Meche no doubt did, too.

He threw an 89-mph fastball, thigh high, the kind of pitch that batters have beautiful dreams about. Blake turned on it, drilled it down the left-field line, a grand slam the instant it cracked off the bat. And then it was 7-0.

Two batters later, Meche threw a 90-mph fastball waist high to David Delluci, and he drilled it over the right-field fence.

And that was that. That’s how you lose games. You lose concentration. You miss your pitches by a little bit. You get frustrated. And that’s just one guy. The rest of the team was just as bad. Tuesday figured to be a long, long night for Trey Hillman.

To reach Joe Posnanski, call 816-234-4361 or send e-mail to jposnanski@kcstar.com.