Royals fall to Blue Jays 7-6 in 11 innings for third straight loss

The seeds of a 7-6 Royals loss in 11 innings to Toronto were sown when Wade Davis arrived at the ballpark on Friday afternoon. He had not pitched in three days, but he noticed a sudden onset of back stiffness.

“I got to the field today, sat down and stood up and had some tightness,” Davis said.

The condition sounded innocuous. Davis hoped to be able to pitch on Saturday. But the consequences on Friday were debilitating for the Royals, who dropped their third game in a row. Without Davis, manager Ned Yost turned to Ryan Madson for the seventh inning. Madson surrendered a three-run lead and cost Johnny Cueto a chance for a victory in his first game as a Royal.

For two innings apiece, Kelvin Herrera and Luke Hochevar mollified the thunderous bats of the Blue Jays long enough to reach the 11th inning. In the end, Franklin Morales was undone by a balk call the Royals considered dubious and a walkoff single by scorching-hot Blue Jays third baseman Josh Donaldson, who drove in his fourth run of the game and hounded Kansas City all night.

“He’s a great player,” manager Ned Yost said of Donaldson. “He’s an All-Star guy.”

The ending felt inevitable and it looked painful. The crowd at Rogers Centre built itself into a fever pitch in the bottom of the 11th inning as Morales faced Donaldson. Troy Tulowitzki had just been gifted second base by home-plate umpire Angel Hernandez, who called Morales for balking when he threw over to first base.

After the game, both Morales and Yost contested the call.

“You can’t argue a balk,” Yost said. “So I didn’t go out there to find out. But it wasn’t a balk.”

Added Morales, “That’s my regular move to first base . . . He’s focused on a lot of things behind the plate. But I don’t want to get fined.”

The Royals, 61-41, did not draw up a scenario like this. But they were left with little choice. Yost does not use closer Greg Holland in tied games on the road. Davis could not pitch. Herrera and Hochevar expended themselves after Madson imploded. And Kris Medlen had just pitched the day before.

The effort from the bullpen was noble but still fell short. The Royals accumulated six runs, but could not manage a hit after the seventh inning.

Cueto exited with the bare minimum for a quality start, six innings pitched, three runs allowed. He yielded seven hits, but tallied seven strikeouts. At times he failed to sync up with new catcher Salvador Perez. He also battled Hernandez’s zone, throwing first-pitch strikes to only 13 of the 26 batters he faced.

At the very least, he kept Toronto in the yard.

The Royals broke a 3-3 deadlock after a fielding blunder by Donaldson in the sixth. With Lorenzo Cain at first base in the sixth, Eric Hosmer nubbed a grounder toward third. Hosmer sprinted down the line. Donaldson had little chance at a throw, but he let fly, anyway.

The decision was unwise. The baseball clattered off fence down the right-field line. Cain jetted home. Hosmer landed at third, where he scored on a sacrifice fly by Kendrys Morales soon after. An inning later, Alcides Escobar shuttled an RBI single up the middle. Kansas City would need every one of those runs to stick with Toronto.

Yost turned to Madson for the seventh. The maneuver backfired when the Blue Jays battered Madson with four hits in four at-bats. He had given up four runs against Toronto in an outing on July 12.

“I don’t know what it is about this team, but I can’t get them out,” Madson said. “It’s starting to [tick] me off a little bit.”

The first was a single by second baseman Ryan Goins. The second was another single, this one by Troy Tulowitzki. The ball bounced off the turf in center field, and Cain misplayed it, expecting the ball to rise higher than it did. Goins scored and Tulowitzki took second.

“I jumped and it went by me,” Cain said. “It is what it is. I’ve got to make that play. That can’t happen in that part of the game, that situation. Unfortunately, it got by me. and they ended up scoring a few runs there.”

Donaldson atoned for his throwing mishap with a vicious RBI double. A single by Jose Bautista removed Madson from the contest.

Yost brought in Herrera. After a walk to designated hitter Edwin Encarnacion, Herrera managed to induce a double-play ball off first baseman Justin Smoak’s bat. The play tied the game, which cost Cueto a chance at a victory.

Cueto slipped into the clubhouse’s back-door entrance at 4:33 p.m. He glanced at the Toronto lineup sitting on his chair. He set the piece of paper down as his new teammates and coaches greeted him.

“What’s up, bro?” said catching coach Pedro Grifol, who also translates for Cueto. “How you doing?”

“Good, man,” Cueto said. “You?”

The warm welcome extended to the diamond. The Royals handed Cueto a three-run advantage before he even took the mound. After two quick outs, Cain swung so fiercely at a fastball from Drew Hutchison that he fell to one knee when he missed. Cain came up limping. But he recovered in time to shoot the next pitch, another fastball, for a double.

Hutchison walked Hosmer on four pitches. Next up was Morales, the team’s leader in runs batted in. He added one more to his ledger here. Morales stung a changeup to the opposite field. The ball skipped over third base, barely fair, and Cain raced home.

Up came Zobrist. He had gone hitless in his Royals debut on Thursday night. His first knock as a Royal drove in two runs. He rolled a single past the outstretched limbs of second baseman Ryan Goins. After Hosmer scored, Morales rumbled home. The throw from right fielder Jose Bautista arrived at the plate just as Morales did.

At this point, catcher Russell Martin swept his glove across the right-handed batter’s box. But Morales had pulled up his slide just shy of contact. Martin spun past him. Their right legs collided, but the glove did not touch Morales. He stepped past Martin, stomped on the plate and waved his hands to signal the eventual ruling of umpire Angel Hernandez: Safe.

And so, at 7:22 p.m., when Cueto left his dugout and skipped over the first-base line to make his Royals debut, he owned a three-run lead. The first two innings felt like a dream. Cueto retired all six batters, with three groundouts in the first and a pair of strikeouts to conclude the second.

The third inning represented reality. Cueto is not invincible, and Toronto wields a fearsome lineup. The Blue Jays recorded their first hit on a bunt single by outfielder Ezequiel Carrera. Mike Moustakas’s throw forced Eric Hosmer to jump off the bag, and the umpires ruled Carrera’s foot reached before Hosmer’s did. Some angles of the replay disputed this decision, but Yost lost his challenge anyway.

The next batter, outfielder Kevin Pillar, pulled his hands inside on a 91-mph fastball and shuttled a single to left. Cueto picked up a force-out at second base, then induced a flyball out by Troy Tulowitzki. The lead remained three runs when Donaldson came to the plate.

The night before, Donaldson hit a home run that stunned Danny Duffy. This time, he sizzled a two-run double off the left-field wall. The baseball took a strange carom off the bullpen fence, which allowed Ryan Goins to score from first. Donaldson had just missed a cutter over the middle. When Cueto followed up with a lifeless changeup, he did not repeat his mistake.

“If he could take back one pitch all night, it would probably be the changeup that he got up to Donaldson,” Yost said.

An inning later, Toronto tied the game. Encarnacion thumped a leadoff single off the wall. Carrera notched a two-out hit. And Pillar threaded a single into left field to even the clubs.

“You’ve got to execute every pitch with a lineup like this,” Grifol said as he translated for Cueto. “You make a mistake, and you’re going to get hurt. You’ve just got to make sure you’re executing pitch to pitch.”

Blue Jays 7, Royals 6, 11 inn.

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One out when winning run scored.

E: L.Cain (7), Donaldson (14). LOB: Kansas City 2, Toronto 9. 2B: L.Cain (23), K.Morales (28), Donaldson 2 (28), Encarnacion (17). RBIs: A.Escobar (36), K.Morales 2 (72), Zobrist 2 (35), Donaldson 4 (73), Pillar (39). SB: L.Cain (19). CS: A.Escobar (5), Zobrist (2). S: Pillar. SF: K.Morales.

Runners left in scoring position: Toronto 4 (Bautista, Pillar, Ru.Martin, Tulowitzki). RISP: Kansas City 3 for 3; Toronto 5 for 15. Runners moved up: Goins. GIDP: Moustakas, Smoak. DP: Kansas City 1 (Infante, A.Escobar, Hosmer); Toronto 1 (Smoak, Tulowitzki, Smoak).

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Hutchison pitched to 1 batter in the 6th.

Loup pitched to 1 batter in the 6th.

Madson pitched to 4 batters in the 7th.

Blown Save: Herrera (4). Inherited runners-scored: K.Herrera 2-1, Loup 1-1, Schultz 1-1. WP: Schultz. Balk: F.Morales.

Umpires: Home, Angel Hernandez; First, Scott Barry; Second, Jim Wolf; Third, Chris Conroy. Time: 3:23. Att: 29,389.

This story was originally published July 31, 2015 at 9:46 PM with the headline "Royals fall to Blue Jays 7-6 in 11 innings for third straight loss."