Royals’ bullpen can’t be blamed for loss in series finale as Tigers complete sweep
Fond memories of the first road trip of the season will be few and far between for the Royals after the Detroit Tigers put the finishing touches on a three-game sweep on Sunday afternoon.
Having now lost six in a row, the Royals will begin a series at Kauffman Stadium on Monday night against the Seattle Mariners.
The much-criticized Royals bullpen doesn’t shoulder the blame for this one. In fact, the duo of Jake Diekman and Brad Boxberger combined for the first scoreless outing by the team’s bullpen this season. However, the Tigers scored all the runs they needed against starter Brad Keller (1-1) to deal the Royals a 3-1 defeat in front of an announced 15,058 at Comerica Park.
Three aggressive base-running plays led to outs, two in the same inning, on a day when the Royals (2-6) couldn’t scratch out more than one run against a Tigers pitching staff spearheaded by starter Tyson Ross’ eight-strikeout performance.
“Absolutely, that’s our game,” Royals manager Ned Yost said of having to live with aggressive outs on the basepaths. “We live by it and die by it. That’s part of our game.”
The Royals scored right out of the gate. Whit Merrifield, the first batter of the game, doubled down the right-field line. Back-to-back ground-outs allowed Merrifield to advance to third and then score in successive at-bats. That’s all the scoring Ross and his cohorts allowed the entire day.
The Royals ran into outs on the bases in the fifth,when catcher Cam Gallagher, who made his first start of the season, got thrown out trying to stretch a leadoff single into a leadoff double.
The next batter, Billy Hamilton (3-for-3), singled and was caught stealing at second base with for the second out of the fifth inning. Merrifield flew out to end the inning.
“If there was anybody that could steal 40 bases and get 40 safes, come find me and tell me about that person because that’s just not how it works,” Hamilton said. “In baseball everybody is not going to steal every base. You can’t.”
Hamilton’s 277 career stolen bases entering this season were the most by any player in the majors since his MLB debut.
Hamilton successfully stole second base in the third, though he stayed down on a knee after the play. He and Tigers second baseman Josh Harrison were both a little worse for wear after Harrison’s glove jammed into the shoulder and neck of Hamilton.
“We’re battling right now,” Hamilton said. “We’ve got to keep everybody in the game that we can and just keep battling through times like this. I’m down to battle with these guys any day of the week. …
“Even though we haven’t started off how we wanted to start off, it’s baseball — you can turn things around as quickly as possible, and that’s what we’re going to do for sure.”
Merrifield got caught stealing in the eighth as he tried to move into scoring position with the team down two and Hamilton already on third.
Ross held the Royals to five hits and one walk in seven innings. The bullpen allowed two hits in two innings. Tigers closer Shane Greene became the first player since saves have been tracked (starting in 1969) to record seven in the first 10 games of a season.
“You can get a sense of how guys are feeling at the plate, the kind of day we’re having as an offense, so when you get that feel that we might have to try to make something happen — we try to make something happen,” Merrifield said. “That’s the good thing about our team. If guys aren’t swinging it, we can still find ways to score runs. Today just didn’t work out for us, but tomorrow it might.”
Keller ran into trouble in the second inning when Christin Stewart, who is quickly becoming a Royals nemesis after his grand slam on Saturday, hit an RBI triple with no outs. Stewart scored two batters later on a ground-ball double play that gave the Tigers a 2-1 lead.
Keller nearly made it out of the sixth inning without giving up a run despite a leadoff double by Nicholas Castellanos — who went 4-for-11 with three doubles, two walks and five runs in the series. But Stewart struck again when he swatted a single into center field with two outs and a 1-2 count to score Castellanos.
“(I wanted it) farther inside,” Keller said of the pitch to Stewart. “I just kind of drifted on me a little bit.”
Streaking
Merrifield’s first-inning double extended his hitting streak to 28 consecutive games, the second-longest in franchise history behind only George Brett (30 games).
“As far as routine goes, nothing changes,” Merrifield said. “I’d be lying if I said you don’t think about it. You try to stay with your approach as best you can. Hopefully, you get a hit your first at-bat so you can just sort of relax the rest of the game and play your game.
“To say I’m not thinking about it would be a lie.”
This story was originally published April 7, 2019 at 3:23 PM.
