Bailey turns in solid outing in Royals’ 8-4 loss to Indians
Homer Bailey stood at his locker in the belly of Kauffman Stadium, hours removed from allowing just two runs across five innings Thursday evening in the Royals’ 8-4 loss to Cleveland, and he shook his head at the proposition.
One of the two runs the Royals starter had allowed came via Indians third baseman Jose Ramirez, whose 350-foot solo home run in the second inning barely cleared the wall in right field. It had the makings of an extra-base hit, but the Indians seized a 1-0 lead with the solo shot.
The question: Did the home run’s distance — or lack thereof, relatively — make any difference to Bailey?
“It’s literally all the same,” Bailey said, “because you don’t get any get extra points if he had hit it 450 (feet). Tough. It’s still a run.”
The good news for Bailey was that was one of the few blights on his otherwise sterling outing. His final line: five innings, six hits, two earned runs, two walks and three strikeouts.
Bailey retired 11 of 15 batters through four innings. He wasn’t perfect, but he worked around the little things: A walk here. A single there. His fastball was on and his off-speed stuff sufficed.
“The fastball command wasn’t bad, and that’s really all we had to work with early on in the game,” Bailey said. “I’ve faced that team a lot over the last couple of years. There’s really no secrets. They’re playing really good baseball and they’re seeing the ball well. When you have games like that, you just try to limit the damage that you can.”
Bailey’s outing began to unravel in the fifth, when he allowed three straight to reach, including an RBI single from Francisco Lindor. That trimmed the Royals’ lead to 3-2, but because reliever Tim Hill stranded the runner Bailey permitted in the sixth and the hosts maintained the lead, Bailey stood to claim a win.
The bad news for Kansas City: The bullpen issues persisted. The Indians torched Jorge Lopez for four runs on four hits in a six-run seventh inning.
The nail in the coffin, in other words.
“It’s really, really frustrating,” Lopez said. “I’ve got no excuse.”
Still, Bailey’s showing was encouraging for the Royals. Besides, in his last outing, Bailey fed a belt-high fastball to Blue Jays second baseman Cavan Biggio, who turned it into a grand slam.
So Bailey’s Thursday performance was an improvement on his last, especially when you consider he called it “tough” waiting out the 2 ½-hour rain delay
The challenge for him moving forward: build on it.
“It was a good-bad day, you know?” Bailey said. “I wasn’t able to go as deep as I wanted to. I left it middle to the one Ramirez hit out. The other run we gave up was a splitter that Lindor went down and got. I thought I battled pretty well. It’s just tough sometimes when you’re ready to walk out and go throw and you have to sit down twice. It was a little humid. Tough to hold onto the ball a little bit. But you’re just gonna have days like that. You try to pitch your way through them.”