Hammel, Soria sink Royals in 10-7 loss to the Tigers

Jason Hammel came apart early. Joakim Soria tripped up late. On a calamitous Memorial Day at Kauffman Stadium, one defined by a potentially crippling injury to starter Danny Duffy, the Royals offered a gut punch and a late twist: They lost a game that they seemingly controlled twice.

The final score said that the Royals lost to the Tigers 10-7 on the opening night of a three-game series. Yet the basic details could not quite capture the chaotic, seesaw nature of this contest. On an idyllic Monday, the Royals built a 3-0 lead, Whit Merrifield came within a single of the cycle, and Eric Hosmer played momentary hero with a go-ahead two-run homer in the seventh. And in the end, it was all for naught.

“It just didn’t work out,” Royals manager Ned Yost said.

Hammel, the Royals’ maligned veteran starter, crashed into the wall in the fifth, issuing three walks that served as the accelerant in a four-alarm fire. When the inning was over, reliever Mike Minor had surrendered a booming three-run homer to Detroit’s J.D. Martinez and the Tigers had scored six runs, erasing a 3-0 lead.

Three innings later, Soria suffered a similar fate, allowing four runs in the eighth as the Tigers turned a 7-6 deficit into a 10-7 lead. When Salvador Perez recorded the final out in the ninth, the Royals (21-29) had dropped to 6-16 against the American League Central and 0-1 in a 10-game home stand that will also feature visits from the defending American League champion Cleveland Indians and the beastly Houston Astros, who improved to 36-16 on Monday after an epic comeback against the Minnesota Twins.

In that sense, the Royals did not lose any ground Monday, remaining 6  1/2 games behind the first-place Twins. Yet, everything else about the day was borderline disastrous. The club will spend the next six to eight weeks without Duffy, who suffered a Grade 1-plus oblique strain following an awkward fall Sunday in Cleveland. That loss, as much as Monday night’s letdown, could serve to shape the rest of the season.

In the moments after the loss, Hammel said he got “too cute” after cruising through the first four innings. The Royals offered three runs of support. He spent the next inning nibbling at the corners. Hammel walked Alex Presley, the Tigers’ No. 8 hitter, to open the inning. He walked catcher Avila to load the bases for Miguel Cabrera. Then, another walk.

“You get the 3-0 lead there, I got to get back and stay in the strike zone like I was,” Hammel said. “The walks, basically, are what bother me the most tonight. (There were) not really any hard-hit balls. I got us into trouble with the walks. So that’s on my shoulders.”

Soria, meanwhile, left without speaking to reporters, continuing his season-long tradition of eschewing interviews with the media. For most of the year, the custom has treated him just fine. He entered Monday with a 1.59 ERA, allowing just one run in May. Along with Minor, who also struggled Monday, Soria has been the Royals’ best reliever. This time, he issued two walks and surrendered four runs.

“He just wasn’t sharp,” Yost said. “He battled command.”

On Tuesday, the Royals will counter Detroit starter Justin Verlander with left-handed rookie Eric Skoglund, who will make his first career start. It will offer another stiff test. But first, they set about wasting an early lead Monday night.

Merrifield opened the scoring in the bottom of the third, attacking a 2-1 fastball from Detroit starter Daniel Norris and depositing the baseball into the seats down the left-field line. He added an RBI triple during a two-run fourth.

But after four scoreless innings, Hammel lost the plot in the fifth. For close to two months, a fatal flaw had served to haunt Hammel. He would cruise through two innings, only to be floored in the third and fourth. He would open the game ducking punches, only to be jarred as he moved through a lineup for a second time.

As he entered his latest start for the Royals, Hammel had allowed three earned runs in the first two innings across his first nine starts. He had allowed 20 in the third and fourth innings. On this night, he found a new inning to skid off-balance.

He survived the tumult in the third and fourth innings. He collapsed in the fifth under the weight of three walks, including one that loaded the bases for Cabrera.

The Royals struck back with two runs in the sixth. Hosmer provided a 7-6 lead with an opposite-field homer in the seventh. And Merrifield came to the plate with an opportunity for the seventh cycle in club history.

Since the franchise’s beginnings in 1969, just four men had combined for a total of six cycles, one of the rarest hitting feats in baseball. The last was George Brett in 1990. As Merrifield dug in against Detroit reliever Francisco Rodriguez, Kauffman Stadium recognized the moment. The crowd came to its feet; some at first, then others, chanting in unison, the noise picking up.

“Just that ovation I got, that’s something I’ll take with me for a while,” Merrifield said. “That was really cool. It was special.”

Moments later, Merrifield came up short, lofting a 2-1 fastball into right field. The fly-out ended the inning. And then, Soria would render Merrifield’s offensive onslaught a footnote.

“I knew (Rodriguez) likes his change-up,” Merrifield said. “I got a change-up up. I put the barrel on it. I just got under it. I would have liked to have had it back. But it is what it is.

The ending stung, the Royals squandering two opportunities for a victory. And yet, the biggest loss may have come earlier in the day.

Tigers 10, Royals 7

This story was originally published May 29, 2017 at 10:05 PM with the headline "Hammel, Soria sink Royals in 10-7 loss to the Tigers."