Salvador Perez reaches 30-homer benchmark but Cardinals sweep Kansas City Royals
Kansas City Royals All-Star catcher Salvador Perez continued the most productive power-hitting season of his 10-year career and launched his 30th home run of the year, but even a Salvy Splash into the left-field fountain couldn’t make up for a seven-run deficit in the first two innings.
The St. Louis Cardinals jumped on Royals left-hander Kris Bubic and forced the Royals to play from behind. They dropped the series finale 7-2 in front of an announced 18,317 on Sunday at Kauffman Stadium.
With the loss, the Royals (49-67) were swept in the three-game set and lost the season series to their I-70 rivals 5-1. They’ll welcome the AL West Division-leading Houston Astros to KC on Monday night.
“That’s an embarrassing game when it goes down like that and we can’t get anything going offensively, a couple days of that in a row,” Royals manager Mike Matheny said. “Every time we have a series where we don’t display the kind of baseball that we’re capable of playing — yeah it comes down to wins and losses, but we also have a high expectation of what it should look like. It didn’t look right, and the guys are wearing that. They take that personal.”
The Royals were swept for the 10th time this season and lost for the 11th time in their last 15 games.
The Cardinals (61-56) have won six straight.
“We’re trying to win,” Perez said of the Cardinals controlling the series. “We never come into the ballpark and try to lose, especially three games in a row. So I don’t know. I think it’s part of the game. Their pitchers threw pretty good.
“We just need to flush the toilet, come in tomorrow and try to win the game again and play hard. Whatever happened, it’s over. We’re not going to change that. So the mentality now is throw today’s game away, come in tomorrow and [concentrate] and try to win the game tomorrow and start a new series against Houston.”
Perez’s two-run 450-foot homer in the eighth inning provided all of his club’s scoring. Andrew Benintendi (2 for 4) and Emmanuel Rivera (2 for 4) had two hits apiece.
Bubic allowed seven runs and nine hits (including two home runs), a walk and a hit batter in 1 1/3 innings. Bubic faced nine batters in the first inning.
He gave up three first-inning runs on four hits and a hit batter. The first three batters of the game each smacked singles. Third, off the bat of Nolan Arenado, drove in the game’s first run.
Arenado and Paul Goldschmidt came around to score on a two-out bases-loaded double to left-center field by José Rondón.
Prior to that double, Bubic walked Lars Nootbaar after having gotten ahead in the count 1-2.
Despite a leadoff single by Whit Merrifield, Cardinals starting pitcher J.A. Happ faced the minimum three batters in the first inning with the help of a double play.
The Cardinals largely picked up where they left off in the second inning. Tommy Edman’s leadoff infield single preceded a Goldschmidt RBI double down the third-base line that Royals infielder Emmanuel Rivera narrowly missed getting his glove on.
The next batter, Arenado, blasted a two-run homer to left field as the first three batters of the inning scored. Tyler O’Neill crushed with a solo homer to center field to give the Cardinals back-to-back home runs as well as four total runs in the inning before an out had been recorded.
Bubic made it through two more batters, but Lars Nootbaar’s double to the wall in center field served as the end of his outing.
“Just a couple of those singles landed early and then those kind of spiraled into some bigger hits that did some damage,” Bubic said. “So I just wasn’t able to make that pitch to get out of that first inning and that second inning as well.
“It is what it is. Days like this happen. I had been going okay to this point. I’m not going to overanalyze, not going to do anything crazy. Obviously, this one is tough because pretty much the whole thing falls on me.”
The Royals, who will not have another break in their schedule until Aug. 30, leaned heavily on the bullpen after Bubic’s second-shortest start of the season.
Relievers Domingo Tapia (1 2/3 innings), Ervin Santana (three innings), Wade Davis (one inning), Jake Brentz (one inning) and Scott Barlow (one inning) combined for 7 2/3 scoreless innings and allowed just three hits.
“We were trying to push Kris as far as we can and let him eat some of that up, but it just got to the point where we had to rescue him,” Matheny said. “And they did that, the bullpen did a fantastic job.”
This story was originally published August 15, 2021 at 4:22 PM.
