Lorenzo Cain injures hamstring in Royals’ 8-4 loss to the Cardinals

A stoic glare formed on Lorenzo Cain’s face as he forged a path through a crowd of reporters late on Tuesday night. He walked slowly, his gait deliberate and measured. He wore a pair of black jeans and dress shoes. He did not stop as he pushed toward a back hallway inside the Royals clubhouse.

It was just 30 minutes after the Royals’ 8-4 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals at Kauffman Stadium, and already, a frustrating night had transformed into something else. The feeling of loss was back. So was the uncertainty.

In an instant on Tuesday night, Cain had pulled up lame while trying to beat out an infield single in the bottom of the seventh. The All-Star center fielder grabbed for his left hamstring and grimaced. The Royals’ dugout fell silent as Cain limped off the field and back to the clubhouse.

In the moments after the game, Royals manager Ned Yost revealed that Cain was diagnosed with a hamstring strain and will see a doctor on Wednesday to determine the severity. The Royals will wait for clarity before offering a possible prognosis.

“I don’t know,” Yost said, when asked if the injury could require a trip to the disabled list. “I don’t know. You guys want to know what I don’t know. Nobody knows.”

In an instant on Tuesday, an uneven start from right-hander Yordano Ventura appeared to be the least of the Royals’ concerns. For another night, a clubhouse had to confront the possibility of another serious injury.

“It’s tough,” first baseman Eric Hosmer said, “especially the way the year’s been going. It’s happened to quite a few guys

Of all the core pieces on this Royals’ roster, few are more irreplaceable than Cain. At his best, he is one of the elite defensive center fielders in the game. On most days, he is a polished presence in the middle of the Royals’ lineup. He is also a 30-year-old with a history of leg injures, which added to the anxiety on Tuesday night.

“We’re hoping the best,” Royals left fielder Alex Gordon said. “We’ll see what happens. If he goes down, we got a guy that can step in just as fine with [Jarrod] Dyson. Obviously, Cain is one of a kind. But you’ve see in the past where (Dyson) has stepped in and played a big role.”

The injury changed the tenor of an otherwise sloppy night. Before Cain came up gimpy in the seventh, the loss had been defined by another vexing start from Ventura, who had returned from an eight-game suspension.

In his first start back, Ventura had allowed seven earned runs in 5  1/3 innings to the Cardinals. The Royals appeared to follow their inconsistent starting pitcher. Right-hander Edinson Volquez was ejected from the dugout during the early innings while barking at home-plate umpire Tim Timmons. The entire enterprise crumbled underneath of the weight of shoddy pitching and middling defense.

Even then, the Royals loaded the bases in the ninth inning against Cardinals reliever Seung Hwan Oh. But Gordon popped out to third base before Hosmer grounded into a fielder’s choice.

The Royals, 40-36, split a two-game set at Kauffman Stadium before heading to St. Louis for the second leg of a four-game series. In the process, they dropped six games behind the first-place Cleveland Indians, who ran their winning streak to 11 games.

At its core, of course, before Cain’s injury, Tuesday’s loss was about Ventura, the confounding right-hander who was coming off two sterling performances and an eight-game suspension. Ventura had missed more than a week for his role in a melee in Baltimore at the beginning of the month. But he had emerged from the incident with a renewed sense of purpose. As he appealed his punishment, he had posted some of his best performances, allowing one run in 13 1/3 innings across two starts. The mechanical issues that plagued him for much of May and June appeared to be ironed out.

The came Tuesday. Ventura ran into trouble in the second inning, yielding two hits before loading the bases with a walk. The Cardinals would cash in all three runs. Ventura barked into his glove as he left the mound.

“He felt a little weird at times, just because of the layoff,” said Royals catching coach Pedro Grifol, who translated for Ventura. “But that’s not an excuse. He’ll continue to work in between starts and get back out there.”

The Royals’ offense sliced into the 3-0 deficit with two runs in the bottom of the second. But they would leave the bases loaded in the third inning after designated hitter Kendrys Morales grounded into a fielder’s choice and Paulo Orlando flied out to right.

Two innings later, Ventura had allowed two more runs, and the game was spiraling out of control.

When Ventura was not battling his command or his delivery, the Royals offense could not seize on the opportunities against Cardinals starter Michael Wacha, a 24-year-old right-hander in his fourth major-league season.

Wacha had entered Tuesday with a 3-7 record and a 4.41 ERA, but his career trajectory represents something the Royals covet. On the night of June 4, 2012, the Cardinals took Wacha, a collegiate pitcher from Texas A&M, with the No. 19 selection in the first round — just 14 picks after the Royals snatched college pitcher Kyle Zimmer.

The baseball draft is a veritable crapshoot, the missed selections easily cherry-picked. Yet the contrast Tuesday was an easy one. While Zimmer nursed a sore shoulder in the minor leagues, and Ventura rode another wave of inconsistency, Wacha earned a win while allowing three earned runs in six innings.

Wacha was only solid. Ventura could not match him.

He wasn’t helped by a strike zone that appeared to shrink during the second inning — a zone that would eventually lead to Volquez’s ejection. He was also let down by a leaky defense. Among the offenders: Orlando missed a cutoff man with an errant throw in the second. Hosmer committed an error during a three-run sixth after failing to make a difficult play to his left in the fifth.

In the end, of course, the mess belonged to Ventura. By the end, the concern had shifted to Cain.

“There’s honestly nothing you can do about it,” Hosmer said. “He’s been doing the same routine he’s been doing for the last couple years. It’s just one of those things where at the last second it just pops. We’ve just got to hope for nothing to be torn in there. Hopefully, it’s just a couple days and we can get him back some time on this road trip, if not, when we get back.”

Cardinals 8, Royals 4

a-popped out for Dyson in the 9th.

E: Piscotty (3), Hosmer (5). LOB: St. Louis 7, Kansas City 9. 2B: Carpenter (24), Moss (11), Piscotty (21), Hosmer (17), Cuthbert (6). HR: Carpenter (14), off Ventura. RBIs: Carpenter 2 (49), Moss (38), Holliday (47), Adams (34), Molina (26), Wong (7), Garcia (8), Orlando (16), Cuthbert 2 (20), Colon (4). SB: Piscotty (4). SF: Adams.

Runners left in scoring position: St. Louis 2 (Moss, Peralta); Kansas City 6 (Merrifield 2, Hosmer 2, Orlando 2). RISP: St. Louis 3 for 10; Kansas City 5 for 16. Runners moved up: Garcia, Holliday, Orlando, Butera. GIDP: Piscotty.DP: Kansas City 1 (Moylan, Colon, Hosmer).

Inherited runners-scored: Flynn 2-2. HBP: Ventura (Piscotty). WP: Wacha.

Umpires: Home, Tim Timmons; First, Ryan Blakney; Second, Mike Everitt; Third, Jordan Baker. Time: 2:50. Att: 32,909.

This story was originally published June 28, 2016 at 10:16 PM with the headline "Lorenzo Cain injures hamstring in Royals’ 8-4 loss to the Cardinals."