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Bannister is brilliant as the Royals beat Tigers 4-0 and improve to 2-0 on the season
By BOB DUTTONThe Kansas City Star
Bannister presented Exhibit A on Wednesday afternoon by working seven scoreless innings in a 4-0 victory over the Detroit Tigers at Comerica Park.
“Today is the type of outing I’m hoping to have this year,” he said. “I don’t walk anybody. I strike out just a few more than I did last year. Then it’s OK if I give up hits because I keep the ball in the ballpark.”
Only Bannister didn’t give up many hits; just two singles to Edgar Renteria. He also struck out four and walked none in a marvelous 86-pitch performance before Leo Nuñez and Joakim Soria contributed one inning apiece to the shutout.
The Royals, as a result, are 2-0 for the first time since 2003 and only the second time since 1979. Heck, it’s only the sixth 2-0 start in their 40-year history.
“You always want to start off strong,” Bannister understated. “We wanted to come out and try to win this series and give the fans something to look forward to when we come back to Kansas City.
“I think we’re accomplishing that. We still have four more games to go on this road trip, but we’re getting there.”
Bannister, 1-0, and Detroit veteran Kenny Rogers, 0-1, battled through five scoreless innings before the Royals scored twice in the sixth. The Royals added two more runs in the eighth against reliever Zach Miner.
All four runs scored with two outs.
“That’s when it counts,” DH Billy Butler said. “If you can drive in runs with two outs, you’re going to be a pretty dang-gum good team.”
Butler drove in runs with a double in the sixth and a single in the eighth. José Guillen and Mark Teahen had the other RBIs. Butler and Joey Gathright each had two of the Royals’ eight hits.
“You can’t do anything but talk about Banny today,” Butler said. “Offensively, we were silent for the first five, and he kept us in there with a 0-0 game.
“So when we did break out a little something, we had a lot of confidence. We got those two runs in the sixth, and it felt like a lot more when he’s pitching like that.”
Bannister raised concerns this spring with an early series of shaky performances. All along, he insisted he was following a plan geared to have him in top form when the season started.
Convinced?
“He’s always ahead in the count,” Tigers DH Gary Sheffield said. “Any pitcher who does that, whether it’s Bannister or anybody else, they’re going to have success.”
Renteria had all three Detroit hits. He had leadoff singles in the first and fourth against Bannister and a two-out single against Soria in the ninth.
The Royals broke a scoreless tie by hitting three doubles in their two-run sixth inning.
Mark Grudzielanek pushed a one-out double past first baseman Carlos Guillen into the right-field corner and went to third on Alex Gordon’s grounder to second.
José Guillen then delivered his first hit and first RBI as a Royal by pulling a two-out double into the left-field corner. Butler followed with an RBI double over the head of center fielder Brandon Inge.
Rogers finished the inning before exiting. He gave up two runs and five hits in six innings.
The Royals extended their lead to 4-0 in the eighth after putting runners at first and third with no outs against Miner. Gathright led off with a double past third and went to third on a ball-four wild pitch to Grudzielanek.
Miner struck out Gordon and Guillen, but Butler produced an RBI single on a grounder to deep short. Teahen followed with an RBI single to center, but the Tigers got the final out by trapping Butler between second and third.
Bannister faced just one batter over the minimum in seven innings.
“It was the same old Banny,” catcher John Buck said. “He could make a (high-)quality pitch when he needed to, and he worked quickly. What he did really well was he threw inside. That’s a great equalizer no matter how good of a hitter you are.
“When a guy is locating on both sides of the plate, it’s almost impossible (for a hitter) to cover both sides.”
That was, as Bannister kept saying, the plan all along.
“I have good control,” he said, “and I try to mix it up. I pitch in and pitch out; I pitch hard and pitch soft. It’s hard to see on TV sometimes, but I’m really changing a lot of stuff each time.
“I get criticized sometimes for the way that I pitch, but I believe in it. My whole goal is to pitch efficiently. I know how to get the most out of me.”