Royals’ offense goes quiet again in 1-0 loss in 13 innings to Texas Rangers

The night pressed on, and the zeroes flashed on the video board beyond right field inside Globe Life Park. One by one, the totals added up to nothing. The Royals’ season played out to a familiar, monotonous script.

On the mound, Danny Duffy, and then the bullpen, were dominant. At the plate, the offense was desolate. All night, the question lingered: Which side would give first?

The answer would come in the bottom of the 13th on Thursday night, when Travis Wood left a changeup up and Texas’ Delino DeShields ripped an RBI single into left field, scoring Joey Gallo from second base and delivering the Royals a 1-0 loss. As the Rangers spilled onto the infield grass, the first game in the history of Globe Life Park to begin with 12 scoreless innings was finally over, three hours and 45 minutes after it started.

The final moment did little to symbolize the reason for the defeat. In the aftermath of the loss, the offensive questions still lingered.

“The bottom line is, we can come up with all the excuses in the world,” Royals manager Ned Yost said. “We’re just not producing.”

These are the questions, of course, that have followed the Royals, 7-8, for most of April. In their first 15 games games, they have handcuffed opponents with the best starting rotation in baseball, a unit that has posted a 1.91 ERA. After 15 games, they have scored the fewest runs in the game, just 41 in 15 games. The sample size remains too small to expect such extremes to continue. But the early trend lines point to a nightly battle, a tightrope walk for the Royals’ starting pitcher, a small margin of error for the bullpen, an offense pressing to provide run support.

“They held the fort right there, giving us a chance to win,” Yost said of the pitching staff. “We just couldn’t muster anything offensively.”

Duffy completed 7 1/3 scoreless innings, pitching around seven base runners while lowering his ERA to 1.32 in four starts. The performance capped a phenomenal five-game run through the Royals’ rotation, a span that included just two earned runs allowed in 34 1/3 innings. When the night was done, and Duffy had finished handing out hugs to every living thing inside the Royals’ dugout, the rotation’s major-league-leading ERA had continued to tumble. That was the positive.

“We did our best to try to hold them to nothing,” Duffy said. “These things happen.”

So did a Royals bullpen that pushed the game to the 13th. And another scoreless appearance from Peter Moylan. And three clean innings from Mike Minor. And snother scoreless inning from Wood in the 12th before the dam finally burst in a 10-pitch at-bat against DeShields in the 13th.

“I threw a decent pitch that last pitch,” Wood said. “I would have liked it to have been down just a little bit more. I think if it’s down a little bit more, I get the ground ball or he swings over it. But in games like that, somebody has got to lose.”

On this night, that was the team that could not score. The Royals scratched out just four hits and zero after the eighth. For 13 innings, the offense spent another night in search of a timely hit.

They sputtered against Rangers starter Andrew Cashner. They wasted a leadoff double from Alcides Escobar in the fifth. When Salvador Perez grounded out with a man on second to end the sixth, the offense had started the season with 15 hits in its first 100 at-bats with runners in scoring position.

There are many ways to quantify the Royals’ offensive ineptitude through 15 games. They are averaging just 2.73 runs per game, a pace that would lead to 442 runs over 162 games. Last season they scored 675, then spent the offseason looking for ways to upgrade their run production.

They traded for Jorge Soler, who remains injured, recovering from a strained oblique. They signed Brandon Moss to replace the departed Kendrys Morales. They also allotted for better production from their core. And so far, they are still waiting. Hosmer finished the night batting just .193 on the season. Alex Gordon is waiting for his first homer with his average at .200. As a team, the Royals finished Thursday 4 for 41 at the plate.

“You just get out of it,” Yost said. “There’s no stock way to do it. You just have to stay patient, keep working and hope it turns quick.”

For now, though, the root of the problem is this: For more than two weeks, the Royals’ starting rotation has maintained a historic pace, logging an ERA that dipped below 2.00 on the first night of a seven-game road trip.

As the club left Globe Life Ballpark on Thursday, the dominant starting pitching had resulted in just seven victories in 15 chances. For 12 innings, the Royals staff kept the Rangers off the board. It wasn’t enough.

“We know what this club is capable of,” Yost said. “And that turns. You just keep grinding it out until it does.”

This story was originally published April 20, 2017 at 11:09 PM with the headline "Royals’ offense goes quiet again in 1-0 loss in 13 innings to Texas Rangers."