Kansas City Royals, Brady Singer fall behind early and lose series finale to Yankees
Brady Singer’s return to the Kansas City Royals seemed as though it had been relatively fast-tracked, but it hit a speed bump in an afternoon game against the New York Yankees.
Singer, who’d been on the injured list since July 20 with shoulder fatigue, made just two brief appearances in a pair of Triple-A games as part of a minor-league rehab assignment. He’d logged a total of 4 2/3 innings in those two games before making his start for the Royals on Wednesday.
The Yankees tagged Singer for five runs, 10 hits and two walks in 3 2/3 innings. The Royals couldn’t overcome the early deficit and lost 5-2 to drop the three-game series in front of an announced 13,748 at Kauffman Stadium.
They did put the tying run at the plate in the bottom of the ninth, but pinch hitter Carlos Santana, who did not start for the first time this season, grounded into a double play to end the game.
“We always want to grind it out, play until the last inning,” Royals first baseman Ryan O’Hearn said. “We’ve seen it multiple times this year where you never know.
“You’re down two, three, even four runs, and a couple things bounce your way, especially this time of year — it’s heating up and the ball is flying here — you never know what could happen. Unfortunately, it just didn’t work out that way today.”
The Royals (49-64) have lost four of six. They’ll have a day off on Thursday, and then they’ll host the first game of the second leg of the I-70 series against the St. Louis Cardinals Friday night.
The Yankees (63-51) will play the Chicago White Sox in the MLB Field of Dreams game in Iowa Thursday night.
Singer (3-8) has now had nine starts this season (out of 20) of four or fewer innings. That’s including a couple of starts in which he was pulled for precautionary reasons after getting hit by line drives back up the middle, as well as an outing when the coaching staff kept him on a low pitch count because of concerns about his shoulder fatigue.
“I’ve been feeling sharp lately,” Singer said. “I obviously took some (time) off and got healthy. I felt really good coming into it, but a lot of things got away from me there.”
The Yankees loaded the bases with one out against Singer in the first inning thanks to a leadoff walk by DJ LeMahieu, a one-out single by Aaron Judge and a walk by Joey Gallo.
With no place left to put runners, Luke Voit slapped a two-run single into right field to give the Yankees the lead. Rougned Odor followed with an RBI single to make it a three-run inning.
An inning-ending double play kept the inning from snowballing further.
“Definitely, command was off on the fastball,” Singer said. “The slider didn’t feel real sharp either. I threw some good ones at times when I needed to. The changeup, I threw it but I didn’t have much command of it either. So an all around struggle with command.”
The development of the changeup as a consistent third pitch has been a topic of conversation around Singer, the No. 18 pick in the 2018 MLB Draft, since his time in the minors. During his latest rehab assignment, he began using a new grip on that pitch and had been encouraged by the results.
According to MLB Statcast data, he threw it just once on Wednesday. Singer said the lack of command overall led him to shy away from the changeup.
“When you don’t have the other two pitches going, it’s kind of hard to go to your third pitch,” Singer said. “I came out here, I wanted to throw it a lot.”
The Royals got a run back in the bottom of the first after Whit Merrifield singled, stole second, advanced to third on a wild pitch and scored on Salvador Perez’s RBI groundout to third base.
Singer gave up two more runs in the fourth inning. Tyler Wade roped a leadoff double, stole third base with a monstrous jump and scored on a LeMahieu RBI single. The next two batters swatted a single into center field, the second off the bat of Judge, to drive in LeMahieu. That was the last batter Singer faced.
“Just one of those starts that wasn’t sharp,” Royals manager Mike Matheny said of Singer’s outing. “He couldn’t locate the fastball, had pretty good movement. He runs into that every once in a while, trying to control how much movement. The slider just didn’t have that kind of bite to be able to bail him out of tough situations. He was in a mess every single inning. You mix that with the heat, first time back. It was a lot.”
The Royals’ second run came in the fifth when Gallagher doubled, tagged and advanced to third on a fly ball and scored on Nicky Lopez’s grounder to shortstop. Yankees shortstop Andrew Velazquez bobbled the ball and Lopez beat out the throw to first.
Merrifield went 3 for 4 and scored a run. He registered his major-league leading 33rd stolen base of the season. He tied a franchise record with 33 consecutive steals without being caught. Carlos Beltran also stole 33 in a row from 1999-2001.
Merrifield’s streak ended in the seventh inning when he was thrown out stealing second base. He’d beaten the throw but was tagged out when he momentarily came off the base during his slide.
Relief pitchers Richard Lovelady, Domingo Tapia, Jake Brentz, Greg Holland and Ervin Santana combined for 5 1/3 scoreless innings for the Royals. They allowed just two hits and one walk.
“Every one of those guys could have probably used another day today,” Matheny said. “They all took the ball, and didn’t just take it. They did a great job right down the line. … They kept us there. We had an opportunity. We had the tying run at the plate right there only because our pen was as good as it was today.”
This story was originally published August 11, 2021 at 4:47 PM.
