Kelvin Herrera, Royals bullpen crumble in 14-8 loss to Orioles

The plans of manager Ned Yost unraveled, maneuver by maneuver, as the Royals careened toward a 14-8 loss to Baltimore on Friday. With Wade Davis unavailable, Yost adjusted his in-game script, only to watch each decision backfire. The eventual blaze did not ignite until the eighth inning, but once it did, the fire raged bright enough to illuminate the Inner Harbor.

The bullpen combusted en route to Kansas City’s sixth loss in its last seven games, surrendering a pair of grand slams in a 10-run penultimate frame. Kelvin Herrera gave up the first four-run blast to outfielder Nolan Reimold. Joba Chamberlain, a castoff from Detroit and Toronto, yielded the second, to backup catcher Steve Clevenger. In between, Franklin Morales gave up a solo home run and infuriated the Orioles by hitting slugger Chris Davis with a pitch.

The defeat left the Royals, 83-57, in the midst of their worst stretch in recent memory. A win by Toronto reduced Kansas City’s lead in the race for home-field advantage to three games. The Royals still possess a 10-game lead with 22 to play over the Minnesota Twins in the American League Central, an advantage that Yost cited as comforting on Friday.

“You’ve got to keep it in perspective,” Yost said. “We’ve had a bad week. If we were sitting here at the end of spring training and said, ‘Hey, on (Sept.) 11 you’re going to be 10 games up on the division, would you be happy with that?’ Yes, I would. So we’ll just keep it in perspective and come back tomorrow.”

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The players dressed quickly and departed the scene on Friday. Yost intended to cancel batting practice for the next morning — a regular decision by him in the second half — to keep his team refreshed. The offense showed life on Friday, with a pair of solo homers by Lorenzo Cain and another bases-empty shot by Alex Rios.

“They’ll work it out,” Yost said. “They don’t need a speech. They don’t need rah-rah. I’m surprised we haven’t gone through a week like this yet. We haven’t, all year long. So it’s pretty impressive that we’re here on Sept. 11, before we have our first bad week.”

The game would become a farce, but when the eighth inning began, Kansas City looked on the verge of a bruising victory. Yost adjusted his pitching deployment to account for Davis, who asked for an extra day of rest due to biceps stiffness. The first misstep in the plans occurred when Danny Duffy lasted only five innings.

Duffy struck out eight and allowed only two runs, but his pitch count reached 101. For the sixth inning, Yost called upon Luke Hochevar. Hochevar walked Davis, gave up a single to Steve Pearce and walked Jonathan Schoop to load the bases. So Yost had to use Ryan Madson, his intended reliever for the seventh, to clean up the mess.

“We got out of sequence there,” Yost said. “We couldn’t get it right.”

Madson limited the damage by the Orioles to one run. But the team needed an arm for the seventh. When Chris Young gave up a two-out, RBI single to Davis, Yost activated Herrera for a four-out appearance.

“You hate taking guys out of their roles,” Yost said.

The first out came with ease. Herrera blew away Pearce to finish the seventh. But he sat through a lengthy top of the eighth as the Royals scored what looked like an insurance run on a single by Salvador Perez that scored Cain.

Up two runs again, Herrera returned to action. Little came easy for him. He gave up a leadoff double to Schoop. Inserted as a pinch hitter, Clevenger smacked a grounder toward third baseman Mike Moustakas. When Moustakas failed to scoop up the baseball, the Orioles could bring the tying run to the plate.

Two batters later, after an infield single by outfielder Gerardo Parra, Reimold stepped in. Herrera fed Reimold a 2-0 fastball clocked at 95 mph. Reimold powered it high into left. The baseball connected with the pole, and the ballpark burst into hysterics.

“Today, I felt pretty good, but I was missing my spots with a couple of pitches,” Herrera said. “So I paid the price.”

The inning descended into embarrassment. Morales gave up a vicious home run to Manny Machado. After a single by Adam Jones, Morales hit Davis with a fastball. Davis responded by smashing his bat and glaring at Morales. Orioles manager Buck Showalter stood watch with Davis at first base, then yelled at the umpires until he received an ejection.

Morales gave up another hit, this one an RBI double to Pearce, and Yost decided he had seen enough. He chose Chamberlain to suppress the flames. The opposite occurred. After a walk to load the bases, Chamberlain served up a grand slam to Clevenger as the crowd exploded once more.

“It went awry, quick,” Yost said.

The Royals had not visited Camden Yards since executing the first half of their sweep in last year’s American League Championship Series. Kansas City is positioning itself for another jaunt deep into October. The Orioles, meanwhile, have collapsed in the second half, with an 11-18 record in August. The club is below .500 and not even in contention for the second wild-card opening.

A couple of hours before Friday’s game, Duffy crumpled a piece of paper containing the Orioles lineup and held it in his left hand. He wound up and threw a rainbow toward a garbage can about 15 feet away. The paper caught nothing but plastic. From his seat on a nearby couch, pitcher Johnny Cueto beamed.

“Kobe Bryant,” Duffy said to the witnesses, invoking the name of his basketball idol. Duffy joked that if he could exhibit such command on the mound, his ERA would not be above four runs per nine innings.

He took the mound with a one-run lead. Cain bashed a two-out home run against Orioles rookie Mike Wright in the top of the first.

At the start, the strike zone of umpire Mark Carlson flummoxed Duffy. Duffy fired four fastballs in the Orioles’ first plate appearance. All four crossed the middle at the plate. All four resided near the knees of Reimold. Carlson called four balls.

After a fifth, the first pitch in an eventual walk to Machado, Duffy looked exasperated. He ranted to Perez during a mound conference. Duffy managed to strike out two and strand both runners, but his command was shaky.

“I thought a lot of pitches that I threw were in the bottom of the zone,” Duffy said. “But you look back, and they were definitely borderline. He was very consistent with his zone tonight. There’s nothing more you can do. You’ve just got to pitch better. You’ve got to adjust.”

His teammates handed him two more runs in the second. A leadoff double by Kendrys Morales started the proceedings. After a walk by Perez, Alex Rios plated Morales with a fly ball to center. Perez sneaked to second base on the play. He scored when Alcides Escobar floated a bloop double into right.

Baltimore chipped away in the third and fourth innings. Their first run soared off the bat of rookie outfielder Dariel Alvarez. He crushed a change-up from Duffy for a solo homer.

In the fourth, Duffy’s occasionally unreliable fielding cost him a run. With runners at the corners, catcher Caleb Joseph hit a grounder up the middle. The ball skipped away from Duffy’s grasp. It rolled toward second baseman Ben Zobrist, who stepped on the bag for one out. Joseph was slow enough that Zobrist nearly had a play at first.

So instead of an inning-ending double play, Joseph drove in a run. That cut Kansas City’s advantage to one. Duffy struck out two more in the fifth, but his pitch count reached 101, and Yost opened up his bullpen. Little would go right from there on out.

Yost urged caution afterward. His team remained owners of the American League’s best record, even after this unsightly week. He expected a swift recovery.

“This is a team that, all of a sudden, something clicks, and they’ll get on a big run,” Yost said. “We’ve seen it many times.”

This story was originally published September 11, 2015 at 10:16 PM with the headline "Kelvin Herrera, Royals bullpen crumble in 14-8 loss to Orioles."