Stellar early, KC’s Danny Duffy falters late as Tigers squeak out 5-4 win over Royals
Royals left-hander Danny Duffy looked nearly unhittable for the first few innings Wednesday night. He had swing-and-miss stuff: His fastball, changeup and curveball were all working.
He struck out the first four batters he faced and five of the first six. He recorded eight strikeouts, seven swinging, and passed Zack Greinke for seventh place on the franchise’s all-time strikeouts list.
Then he gave up a leadoff walk in the fifth and his evening unraveled in a stretch of five batters as the Royals lost a one-run game to the Tigers, this time 5-4, for the second night in a row.
“It just looked like it was going to be one of those days where everything was clicking for him, and I think it was,” Royals manager Mike Matheny said. “Unfortunately, that leadoff walk — once again, those have scored on a very high percentage on us this year — that just kind of opened the door for things to go bad.”
Duffy gave up four runs on three hits and a walk and left with the game tied at 4 after five innings. A seventh-inning solo homer by Tigers outfielder JaCoby Jones was enough to make winners of the host team at Comerica Park.
With a starting rotation beat up by COVID-19 and injuries and an increasingly taxed bullpen, Duffy had seemed poised to provide a much-needed elixir for at least one night.
“I felt confident with what I was doing out there,” Duffy said. “It just didn’t go our way, and it’s unacceptable. To have that kind of stuff tonight — that kind of stuff that I had, (I’ve) got to go deeper into the game, man. It’s brutal. Got to go deeper. Got to go deeper into the game.”
Even though the lead was given up by the bullpen, Duffy put the responsibility on himself, saying, “Our bullpen shouldn’t have been in that situation tonight.”
The Royals (2-4) scored in each of the first three innings but were held scoreless for the remainder of the game. Maikel Franco went 3-for-4 with a double and two RBIs. Whit Merrifield went 2-for-4 with a double and scored twice.
Duffy didn’t allow a hit until the third inning, when he’d been staked to a 4-0 lead. Jones hit a double into the left-field corner that one-hopped off the wall.
The previous batter, Grayson Greiner, reached when Duffy’s slider hit him in the foot. Jones’ double left runners on second and third with no outs, but Duffy limited the damage to one run on a Jonathan Schoop sacrifice fly.
In the fifth, Duffy allowed three of the four runs against him. He walked the first batter of the inning, Victor Reyes, then gave up a one-out double to Jones. A sacrifice fly gave the Tigers their second run of the game and pulled them within two, 4-2, with two outs.
“I thought Danny did a really good job,” Matheny said. “His stuff looked right tonight. Unfortunately that one inning got away, and that one inning has been biting us.”
Schoop, who homered Tuesday, connected with an 0-1 fastball and it carried just far enough to surpass the reach of right fielder Merrifield as he leaped at the wall. Schoop’s long fly ball cleared the fence for a game-tying two-run homer.
“Off the bat, I didn’t think it was going to get out,” Duffy said. “I don’t think I hit the spot that I wanted. I needed to go farther down with that. If it’s farther down, it’s probably a different result.”
The score remained 4-4 until Jones hit a 3-2 fastball from reliever Ian Kennedy that carried into the right-field seats. He has now homered three times in the last five games. His eight total bases Wednesday were one shy of his career high.
“I felt like my fastball was good the previous at-bat,” Kennedy said. “I threw some good cutters to Jones that whole at-bat. I felt good with everything.
“I don’t want to count that as a missed spot, but you don’t want to put a guy with his speed on, so you’ve got to throw a strike and not leave it up to the umpire to call a ball or a strike. I felt like it was good. I reacted like it was a pop-up, and it wasn’t.”
This story was originally published July 29, 2020 at 9:04 PM.
