Pirates snap KC Royals’ win streak despite strong outing from Jakob Junis
It’s easy to take it for granted. For the better part of the last week, the Kansas City Royals offense delivered just as many runs as they needed to win.
They needed nine to win in a walk-off against Tampa Bay, they got nine. They needed two runs to get a win behind Brady Singer, they got it. Need three to secure a series sweep, break out the brooms.
Of course, an undefeated record in one-run games simply isn’t sustainable over the course of an entire season. The Royals landed on the losing end of just such a game on Tuesday night.
They fell victim to the same opportunistic offense and stellar pitching that they’d rode to a five-game win streak. This time they fell to the Pittsburgh Pirates, 2-1, in front of an announced 5,510 at PNC Park.
The loss snapped a five-game win streak for the Royals (14-8). The teams wrap-up their two-game set on Wednesday night.
Royals starting pitcher Jakob Junis (1-1) allowed two runs in 6 1/3 innings, struck out nine and came up with the short end of the stick.
“That was a really well-pitched game by Jake, it’s just a shame” Royals manager Mike Matheny said. “He did a fantastic job of doing exactly what we hoped he would do, controlling the counts. The first inning two-out walk ended up really hurting us, but besides that he just did a great job, going deep into the game, being very efficient.”
The Royals were held to four hits. The heart of their batting order, Salvador Perez (1 for 4), Jorge Soler (0 for 4) and Hunter Dozier (0 for 4) all squared balls up and hit them on the screws but right at defenders or where they were tracked down by well-positioned outfielders.
“You keep reinforcing with the guys that there’s only so much you can control,” Matheny said. “We had a couple balls really hit hard. You’d like to see a little elevation on a couple of them, and other times it’s right at them. So stay with the process. You’re doing things right if you’re able to square up major-league pitching and have that kind of exit velocity.”
They scratched out one run against Pirates left-hander Tyler Anderson thanks to Carlos Santana beating out the first of his two infield singles in the game. They were kept off the board after the third inning despite several extremely loud and hard-hit outs throughout the night.
The Pirates’ bullpen entered the night having been fairly dominant since the second week of the season. Since April 13, that group had posted a 4-0 record with a 1.04 ERA in 12 games.
That entered the series as the lowest bullpen ERA during that stretch in the National League and the second-lowest in the majors behind the Seattle Mariners (0.79).
“It’s part of the game,” Perez said. “Hopefully, I want to win every game, but that’s impossible. No?
“But I think we were playing really good baseball. It was a close game today, and we didn’t have that kind of opportunity. Their pitchers were doing a pretty good job today. They didn’t make many mistakes. They were good. There’s some games like that. We just need to turn the page, be back tomorrow and try to win the game tomorrow.”
The Pirates (12-11) scored first on a two-out RBI single by Colin Moran in the bottom of the first. Junis appeared to have gotten out of the inning with a third consecutive strikeout, but a borderline pitch to Bryan Reynolds with two strikes that had Junis and three-quarters of the infielders ready to walk off the field was called a ball.
Reynolds walked, advanced on a wild pitch and came around to score on Moran’s single.
The Pirates put two men on with back-to-back singles to start the second inning, but Junis got a pair of strikeouts, including a failed two-strike bunt attempt by Anderson, and a lineout to second base to get out of the inning unharmed.
The Royals pulled even in the top of the third when Nicky Lopez drew a walk to start the inning. He advanced to second on a Junis sacrifice bunt, moved to third on a Whit Merrifield ground ball to second and scored when Santana beat out an infield single hit down the third-base line.
Junis retired the next 14 consecutive batters after back-to-back singles in the second innings. He didn’t allow another batter to reach until a two-out single by Moran in the sixth inning.
“I just started getting ahead, throwing more strikes, using my cutter to both sides of the plate,” Junis said. “That was a key. We were getting ahead to lefties with some backdoor cutters and then busting them in, mixed in the slider. Got some quick outs too, first or second pitch there.”
Junis threw 21 pitches in the first inning, but threw 15,14, 6 and 9 nine pitches in the second through fifth innings, respectively.
The Pirates got the go-ahead run in the seventh inning after a Jacob Stallings lead-off single. With one-out, the Pirates executed a hit-and-run that put runners on the corners and forced Matheny to go to the bullpen.
With Scott Barlow pitching out of the bullpen, Wilmer Difo’s pinch-hit blooper dropped in front of a sliding Michael A. Taylor in left-center with Hunter Dozier, who started in left field, charging in on the play. That bloop single scored Stallings to give the Pirates a 2-1 edge in the seventh. That was the final score.
“On the pitching side of things, I thought top to bottom we did great,” Junis said. “We executed a lot of pitches. It’s just tough to go out like that, that seventh inning.”
Roster moves
Prior to Tuesday’s game, the Royals announced infielder/outfielder Ryan McBroom had been recalled from the alternate training site and right-handed pitcher Jake Newberry had been optioned to the alternate site.
McBroom pinch-hit in the eighth inning and struck out.
The Royals also announced they’d agreed to terms on a minor-league contract with right-handed pitcher Mike Shawaryn on a minor-league contract. Shawaryn, 26, made his MLB debut for the Boston Red Sox in 2019.
Shawaryn posted a 9.74 ERA in 14 appearances (20 1/3 innings) in the majors for the Red Sox.
This story was originally published April 27, 2021 at 8:13 PM.
