Royals strike for six runs in the eighth in 7-3 win over Astros

At age 32, Astros reliever Luke Gregerson has crafted a nice little baseball career. He entered Friday night with a career 2.83 ERA. He saved 31 games in 2015. In nine seasons, he has pocketed close to $30 million.

It’s the kind of career most any reliever would take, prosperous and productive and susceptible to just one piece of baseball kryptonite: The Kansas City Royals.

Yes, you cannot blame Gregerson if he never wants to see the Royals again. This is a pitcher who was a member of the Oakland A’s in 2014, on the mound in the miraculous Wild Card comeback at Kauffman Stadium. He was pitching in relief again in Game 4 of the 2015 American League Division Series, when the Royals roared back from a 6-2 deficit against the Astros and sent the series back to Kansas City.

And then there was Saturday night at Minute Maid Park. Gregerson was on the mound again. The Royals were in the house once more. The Ghost of Royals Comebacks Past reunited for an inning that would have fit neatly into the catalog — albeit with much, much lower stakes.

The Royals greeted Gregerson with six runs in a 7-3 victory over the Astros. The performance inspired some playful joking inside the Royals dugout as it transpired. This was not Game 4 of the 2015 ALDS, but it did kind of look like it.

“We might have mentioned it a little in the dugout,” Royals left fielder Alex Gordon said.

The victory engineered some good vibes after an uninspiring opening week. The meltdown came courtesy of Gregerson, who surrendered six runs on five hits and a pair of home runs by Eric Hosmer and Salvador Perez.

“(It was) definitely a similar inning to what it was in the playoffs,” Hosmer said. “But I think it was just big for our offense to break out. We got ourselves in a couple of situations and just lacked the big hit.”

On the back end of a feeble performance in the season-opening series in Minnesota, the Royals (2-3) secured their first series victory of the season with a second straight win over the Astros.

The eighth-inning charge erased a 2-1 deficit and a week of offensive question marks. Hosmer, who entered the night mired in a 3-for-16 skid, busted out of an early slump with a booming blast to right-center. Perez added a punctuation mark with his third homer of the season. Cheslor Cuthbert put the Royals on the board in the fifth with a solo homer into the Crawford Boxes in left field.

Before the late power display, the eighth inning had hummed along almost perfectly. Alcides Escobar drew a leadoff walk. Pinch hitter Mike Moustakas roped a single to left. Pinch runner Raul Mondesi replaced Moustakas, and Drew Butera dropped down a textbook sacrifice bunt.

That brought up Gordon, who delivered the key two-run double to left field on Friday night. This time, Gordon ripped a two-run double over the head of right fielder George Springer, and the Royals led 3-2.

“A hit like that, that just breaks the ice,” Hosmer said. “Like I’ve been telling you, I think we’ve just been lacking that one big hit to really get things going. So that just broke the ice for everybody. You could just sense the energy change in the dugout.”

Lorenzo Cain followed by blooping an RBI single into right field. Moments later, Hosmer and Perez delivered the knockout combination.

Just like that, the Royals sit one game away from .500 heading into Sunday’s series finale. At worst, they will enter Monday’s home opener with a 2-4 record, a decent outcome after opening the year with three losses in Minnesota.

“What series in Minnesota?” Royals manager Ned Yost said, responding to a question about the rebound performance. “The one that I don’t even think about or care to bring up again? Things happen. We had a bad series. We’ve moved on. And we’ve won two games against a really good team.”

The sentiment held sway in the clubhouse, of course. However unsightly, the Royals were not going to be judged by three April games in Minnesota. Yet the expedient nature of the turnaround was a pleasant development.

“You just got to move on and realize there’s 159 more to go,” Gordon said. “And we’re going to have our ups and downs, and that’s the way it goes. We came in here with the mentality that we’re going to compete.”

As the offense finally clicked into gear, left-hander Danny Duffy earned his first win, holding the Astros to just two runs in seven innings in his second start of the season.

Duffy did not possess his sharpest stuff, finishing with three strikeouts and two walks. But he evaded heavy trouble all night and backed up Jason Vargas’ shutdown performance on Friday night.

In the moments after the victory, Duffy gave his performance a better grade than his debut outing in Minnesota. His sinker was moving. His change-up was diving.

“I was just telling Hos: Having the roof open definitely had something to do with it,” Duffy said. “My change-up was diving a lot. I felt really good overall.”

The victory, of course, was not as easy as the final score indicated. The Astros staked out a 2-0 lead after four innings as starter Dallas Keuchel delivered a strong performance. Houston would not relinquish the lead until the top of the eighth.

Astros catcher Brian McCann ambushed Duffy with nobody out in the third, drilling a first-pitch fastball into the seats in right field. It resembled the only run Duffy allowed in the season opener, a homer to Minnesota’s Miguel Sano. It foreshadowed more trouble across the next two innings. Yet Duffy deftly avoided a big inning.

The Astros scored a run in the fourth on a walk and three consecutive singles. But Duffy ended the threat by getting McCann to hit into a double play on a well-struck grounder to second baseman Christian Colon. The bases-loaded escape kept the deficit at two runs, which would prove pivotal in the late innings.

“It was big,” Duffy said. “But you know what? I was getting ground balls that whole inning. A couple of those hits didn’t even leave the infield. My teammates were doing the best to make those plays. They were just hitting them where they ain’t.”

As Duffy fended off the Astros, the Royals offense was tied down by Keuchel, the former Cy Young winner who came back to earth last season. One season after posting a 2.48 ERA in 232 innings, leading the Astros to a Wild Card berth in 2015, Keuchel was human in 2016. His ERA jumped to 4.55. His record dipped to 9-12. His peripheral numbers regressed across the board.

But facing a Royals lineup that had managed just 10 runs in its first four games, he yielded just one run in seven innings.

But hope would surface when Gregerson appeared from the bullpen in the eighth. Six runs later, the Royals had buried the memory of a lost four days in Minnesota and rekindled the feeling of a playoff comeback in 2015. Well, sort of. It is April, after all.

“The circumstances are different,” Yost said. “But it was a nice inning.”

Royals 7, Astros 3

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a-singled for Colon in the 8th. 1-ran for Moustakas in the 8th.

E: Keuchel (1). LOB: Kansas City 2, Houston 5. 2B: Gordon (2), Beltran (2). HR: Cuthbert (1), off Keuchel; Hosmer (1), off Gregerson; Perez (3), off Gregerson; McCann (2), off Duffy. RBIs: Gordon 2 (4), Cain (1), Hosmer 2 (2), Perez (3), Cuthbert (1), Gonzalez 2 (4), McCann (2). CS: Marisnick (1). S: Escobar, Butera.

Runners left in scoring position: Kansas City 1 (Butera). RISP: Kansas City 2 for 4; Houston 2 for 6. Runners moved up: McCann, Gonzalez. GIDP: Perez, Bregman, McCann. DP: Kansas City 3 (Colon, Hosmer), (Colon, Escobar, Hosmer), (Cuthbert, Colon, Hosmer); Houston 1 (Keuchel, Altuve, Gurriel).

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HBP: Duffy (Springer). WP: Minor.

Umpires: Home, Alfonso Marquez; First, Chad Fairchild; Second, Dave Rackley; Third, Larry Vanover. Time: 2:42. Att: 35,373.

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This story was originally published April 8, 2017 at 9:06 PM with the headline "Royals strike for six runs in the eighth in 7-3 win over Astros."