Royals fall to home-run-happy Blue Jays 6-2 in Toronto
With two outs and needing one pitch to get out of the seventh inning with the score tied, Royals starting pitcher Danny Duffy threw a slider that didn’t get down far enough, watched the ball launch off of Eric Sogard’s bat, and turned. Shortly thereafter Duffy hunched over as if he’d taken that swing from Sogard right to the gut.
Sogard’s solo home run into the right-field corner knocked the wind out of Duffy and put the Toronto Blue Jays in front for good as the Royals faltered late in a 6-2 loss in the first game of a four-game series in front of an announced 18,399 at the Rogers Centre on Friday night.
“I threw a lot of sliders tonight,” Duffy said of the pitch to Sogard. “He might have been sitting on it. He called time, I think in the back of his mind he was probably going to sit slow. I imagine that he did. If I had thrown my good four-seam the two pitches before down and away glove side, which is my bread-and-butter — he didn’t even look like he offered at them.
“So I think he was waiting for that. He’s a good hitter. He’s having a great year. That’s what good hitters do. He capitalized on my mistake. It’s tough to stomach, but that’s the way it goes sometimes.”
Martin Maldonado went 3 for 4 with a double and a home run for the Royals (28-54), and Alex Gordon went 3 for 4 with a double and an RBI. Cheslor Cuthbert also had two hits in the loss.
While the Royals got to Blue Jays starting pitcher Sean Reid-Foley in the middle innings, the Blue Jays (30-52) hit crucial home runs late to tie, take the lead and add to their lead against the Royals pitching staff.
Toronto’s Lourdes Gurriel Jr., hit two home runs, both in the final four innings. All six of the Blue Jays’ runs came on home runs.
Neither team scored a run through the first four innings. Duffy struck out six through four, and each team’s lineup managed to scratch out just two hits apiece.
All three runs Duffy allowed came in the sixth and seventh innings. Duffy (3-4) pitched 6 2/3 innings and allowed three runs on seven hits and one walk. He struck out eight.
“I feel like Duffy was throwing the ball really good,” said Maldonado, who was behind the plate for Duffy’s outing. “I feel like the last couple games we have thrown the ball really good. Just we can’t catch a break. Every time we make a mistake it’s a homer instead of a pop-up or a rollover. As a staff and as a catcher, we probably have to do a better job with that.”
Blue Jays starting pitcher Reid-Foley entered the game with just nine career starts in the majors, just one this season, and he’d allowed three runs in two innings and racked up 52 pitches in the process.
Reid-Foley, 23, had allowed just two harmless singles and one walk over the first four innings, then Maldonado stepped into the box in the fifth inning with bad intentions and swinging a relatively-hot bat in his previous 10 games.
Having hit .333 with six doubles, a homer and seven RBIs in his previous 10 games, Maldonado crushed a 2-0 curveball from Reid-Foley over the center-field wall for his fourth home run of the season.
The Royals added another run in the sixth inning on a Nicky Lopez one-out double followed by Gordon’s RBI single up the middle. That gave the Royals a 2-0 edge and marked the end of the outing for Reid-Foley after 5 1/3 innings.
Royals shortstop Humberto Arteago and left fielder Gordon were converging on a pop-up by Vlad Guerrero Jr., but it dropped in for a leadoff single in the bottom of the sixth. The next batter, Gurriel, hit a 3-2 pitch from Duffy out to center for a game-tying two-run homer.
Sogard’s seventh-inning home run off Duffy gave the Jays their first lead.
“He got burned on a couple of sliders, but outside of that I thought he was fantastic,” Royals manager Ned Yost said of Duffy. “He was looking like he was gonna give us seven strong, and he ended up giving us 6 2/3. He did a really good job of executing pitches. Went to try to get a slider to Gurriel and he ended up hitting it out of the park. Then of course tried a 3-2 slider — which was a good pitch, it just was elevated a little bit — to Sogard.”
The Royals left the bases loaded in the bottom of the seventh. After a Cuthbert single and a Maldonado one-out double, Billy Hamilton struck out and the Jays intentionally walked Whit Merrifield to load the bases and pitch to Lopez. Lopez hit a chopper down the first-base line for the final out of the inning.
Gurriel’s second homer of the night added an insurance run in the eighth off Royals reliever Wily Peralta. Gurriel has now had back-to-back multi-homer games. Royals left-hander Tim Hill gave up a two-run homer to Randal Grichuk in the eighth inning.
This story was originally published June 28, 2019 at 9:10 PM.
