With Shohei Ohtani in town, Royals' altered lineup proves useless in loss to Angels | The Kansas City Star

Royals manager Ned Yost weighed the options.

Give guys like Jorge Soler, who led the team with a .375 on-base percentage, a chance to set the tone for the game from the two-spot in the lineup or leave in that spot Whit Merrifield, whose 11 hits ranked second on the team. Continue with a lineup that through 10 games had averaged .188 with runners in scoring position and batted a combined .222, or shuffle it around.

Yost chose the latter on Thursday at Kauffman Stadium, where the Los Angeles Angels arrived for a four-game series with two-way player Shohei Ohtani in the lineup for his second of three scheduled days on offense.

“See if we can stack some more RBIs up there,” Yost said of his lineup.

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But the Royals weren’t able to get those RBIs and lost 7-1. Angels starting pitcher Nick Tropeano, making his first major-league start since undergoing Tommy John surgery in 2016, held the Royals to six hits in 6 2/3 scoreless innings. The Royals stranded six baserunners in the first seven frames. They squeaked across their only run on Lucas Duda's two-out RBI single off Angels reliever Jim Johnson in the eighth.

And Ohtani, the Japanese phenom who draws the sort of media contingent that eclipsed 100 Japanese reporters in each of two starts on the mound, delivered the hardest blow to the Royals’ chances in the seventh inning.

Ohtani, a left-handed hitter turned a 97 mph fastball from Brandon Maurer in on the hands into a two-out triple to right-center field that cleared the bases. The three runs that scored on the hit, Ohtani’s first of the game, were charged to reliever Blaine Boyer, who three batters earlier had allowed a two-run single to Kole Calhoun.

Hours earlier, Yost had expressed excitement over seeing what Ohtani could do. Yost had heard that umpire Jerry Davis had told Royals first-base coach Mitch Maier, “Wait til you see this guy. He’s something else.”

“He’s impressing a lot of people,” Yost said of Ohatani and his major-league wares as both hitter and pitcher. “Could be interesting to see.”

But for six innings, there was nothing to see from Ohtani. In his first at-bat, Ohtani was caught looking at a fastball on the outer edge of the plate for one of Royals starter Ian Kennedy’s three strikeouts. In his second at-bat, Ohtani flew out to left field. The Royals took the bat out of his hands his next time up, choosing to pitch to Angels catcher Martin Maldonado with two outs and a runner on second base instead.

Kennedy, who recorded a quality start in his third straight outing, had rendered Ohtani useless.

"Not let him get a hit with runners on," Kennedy said. "Not going to really reveal what our plan was. But I was executing some good pitches."

Kennedy did much of the same with the rest of the Angels’ lineup after allowing Ian Kinsler to knock in the first run of the game on a leadoff homer in the first inning. Although Kennedy gave up seven hits, he stranded eight runners. As he struggled with his command, he only struck out three batters.

But Kennedy, who has a 1.00 ERA in 18 innings this season, was charged with the loss — the Royals’ eighth in their first 11 games.

Alas, Yost's lineup experiment did little to alter the Royals' fortunes.

Soler, who had struck out seven times in eight games, struck out four times on Thursday. Merrifield went 0 for 4 and had a four-game hitting streak snapped.

While Soler struggled to send any pitches fair, Ryan Goins hit four into the field rather squarely: a two-out single in the second inning, a two-out double in the seventh and a two-out single in the ninth. In the fourth, he roped a liner into the left side of the diamond with runners on the corners. Angels third baseman Luis Valbuena snared it and threw out Abraham Almonte, who couldn't get back to first base quickly enough, ending a threat.

Such has been the Royals' luck. They tallied nine hits but couldn't stop the streaking Angels, who won their fifth straight and saw Mike Trout cap a 3-for-4 night with his fifth homer of the season. The 425-foot blast to straightaway center field in the eighth came on the 11th pitch of a battle with Maurer.

"We just can’t get that big hit right now," Yost said.

"There’s no push-button offense that you can say, ‘OK, you’re cold. I’m gonna get you hot.’ They get hot when they get hot. They just keep trying to put together good at-bats."

Los AngelesAB		R	H	BI	BB	SO	Avg.
Kinsler 2b	5	1	1	1	0	0	.222
Trout cf	4	2	3	1	1	0	.273
Upton lf	5	1	3	0	0	0	.296
Pujols 1b	5	0	2	0	0	0	.274
1-Marte pr-1b	0	0	0	0	0	0	.440
Calhoun rf	5	1	1	2	0	2	.250
Simmons ss	4	1	2	0	1	0	.356
Valbuena 3b	5	1	2	0	0	0	.260
Ohtani dh	4	0	1	3	1	1	.346
Maldonado c	5	0	0	0	0	0	.278
Totals42		7	15	7	3	3

Kansas CityAB		R	H	BI	BB	SO	Avg.
Jay lf	4	0	1	0	0	0	.244
Soler rf	4	0	0	0	0	4	.207
Moustakas 3b	4	1	2	0	0	0	.341
Duda 1b	4	0	2	1	0	0	.219
Merrifield dh	4	0	0	0	0	1	.256
Almonte cf	4	0	1	0	0	1	.167
Goins 2b	4	0	3	0	0	0	.333
Escobar ss	2	0	0	0	2	1	.158
Butera c	4	0	0	0	0	1	.167
Totals34		1	9	1	2	8

Los Angeles	100	000	510	—	7	15	0
Kansas City	000	000	010	—	1	9	0

Los Angeles	IP	H	R	ER	BB	SO	NP	ERA
Tropeano W, 1-0	62/3	6	0	0	2	6	88	0.00
Johnson	11/3	2	1	1	0	1	16	3.12
Parker	1	1	0	0	0	1	15	5.40

Kansas City	IP	H	R	ER	BB	SO	NP	ERA
Kennedy L, 1-1	6	7	1	1	2	3	100	1.00
Boyer	2/3	4	5	5	1	0	25	23.14
Maurer	11/3	3	1	1	0	0	29	12.46
Herrera	2/3	1	0	0	0	0	16	0.00
Smith	1/3	0	0	0	0	0	1	6.75