Kansas City Royals stop losing slide with a win over the AL West-leading Astros
The pitch from Houston Astros reliever Yimi Garcia was on track to sail inches off the outside corner, but that didn’t stop Kansas City Royals All-Star catcher Salvador Perez, especially not with a chance to give his team the lead.
Perez reached out and got just enough of the end of the bat on the pitch to punch it into right field for a two-out, two-run single in the bottom of the eighth inning. That hit broke a tie and gave the Royals enough of a cushion to allow the bullpen to secure a series-opening victory.
The Royals pieced together an eighth-inning rally with the top three hitters in their order — Whit Merrifield, Nicky Lopez and Perez — doing the late legwork with two outs to lift the club to a 7-6 win Monday night over the AL West Division-leading Astros in front of an announced 10,228 at Kauffman Stadium.
The win snapped a four-game skid for the Royals (50-67), who earned their 29th come-from-behind win of the season.
They’d entered this series having just been swept in a three-game set by the St. Louis Cardinals at home.
“We just played three games that I felt were very uncharacteristic, that last series,” Royals manager Mike Matheny said. “We didn’t display the kind of fight, it just wasn’t like us.
“We talk about teams having short memories. It’s pretty amazing how these guys forget about the last one and then come back and keep going.”
Merrifield went 3 for 5 with an RBI and a run scored. Lopez had a hit, a walk and three stolen bases in his first career multi-steal game. Carlos Santana went 2 for 4 with a double. Hunter Dozier homered, and Ryan O’Hearn went 2 for 3, doubled and drove in two runs.
Royals starting pitcher Carlos Hernández allowed four runs on eight hits, including two home runs. He did not walk a batter, and he struck out two. He left the game with the score tied 4-4 after he gave up a single and balked the runner to second to start the seventh.
Astros starting pitcher Jake Odorizzi, who began his major-league career with the Royals in 2012, allowed four runs on eight hits and two walks in 5 1/3 innings.
The Astros (70-48) tied the score 5-5 in the top of the eighth inning when pinch-hitter Taylor Jones doubled down the left-field line off of Royals left-handed reliever Jake Brentz and scored on Aledmys Diaz’s two RBI single against reliever Scott Barlow.
The first two batters in the bottom of the eighth for the Royals, Dozier and Emmanuel Rivera, struck out. The next batter, Merrifield, lined a single into right field.
Then Lopez lined the first pitch he saw up the middle for a single, and Merrifield went first-to-third.
“I was trying to get a fastball,” Lopez said. “I was geared up for the fastball, and I swung at a curveball. So sometimes that’s what happens. But it was just kind of moving the line. I liked our chances if I was able to get on. More (often) than not, Sal is going to deliver. Obviously, he did.”
Lopez broke for second on the first pitch to Perez, a ball in the dirt, and advanced without a throw. That put two runners in scoring position for Perez.
“Bring them in,” Perez said of his approach in his final at-bat. “Just trying to do something, you know, blooper, base hit, something so we can get ahead in that inning and try to win the game.
“It was a cutter off the plate a little bit. I’m just trying to do my job. I think my job is to try to bring these guys in.”
When Perez, who has a team-high 77 RBIs this season, reached out for that 1-0 slider and dropped it into right field, Merrifield and Lopez scored.
“As soon as I hit it, I knew, okay, we’ve got a chance,” Perez said. “One hundred percent it’s going to get down. That was a great game tonight. Great game.”
Lopez’s run proved crucial after the Astros got one run in the top of ninth on a solo home run by Jason Castro. The Royals trailed two different times in the game.
“Not giving in, not giving up ,” Matheny said. “It’s okay there’s two outs, so what. Let’s make something happen. Whit has been extremely good about being the guy that gets things going. Nicky is really following suit with a real nice approach, just shoots the ball up the middle, gets on, gets movement. Little did we know how badly we were going to need that second run that inning.
“Then you put the guy at the plate that — I don’t know, somebody else figure out how to talk about that differently — but it’s freakish and it’s special.”
This story was originally published August 16, 2021 at 10:30 PM.
