Kansas City Royals can’t escape hole after Daniel Lynch gives up 6 runs at Cardinals
Kansas City Royals left-hander Daniel Lynch threw 81 pitches, but it only took two to change his outing for the worse.
Lynch, who made his first start of the season, gave up six runs on nine hits, including three home runs, in a 6-5 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals in front of an announced 40,398 at Busch Stadium Tuesday night. The Royals have lost three straight.
Lynch also struck out seven and walked only one in five innings. All of the damage against Lynch came in two three-run innings, the first and the fourth.
“You never want to give up six runs, so I want to start with that,” Lynch said. “But I felt like I actually threw the ball really well. You obviously want the team to be in a better position to win.”
The Royals (2-3) rallied to tie the score after trailing by three at the end of the first, but they couldn’t come back a second time despite pulling within a run in the eighth inning.
Royals star slugger Salvador Perez blasted his first two home runs of the season, and center fielder Michael A. Taylor also homered for the first time this season.
The Royals’ Adalberto Mondesi (1 for 4) Nicky Lopez (1 for 4) each scored runs, while catcher Cam Gallagher (1 for 2) doubled and walked.
“I take a lot of pride in my ability to compete and keep us in the game and save the bullpen,” Lynch said. “I felt like I did a good job there, giving us some length. I felt like I didn’t get down on myself or change the plan. I kept attacking after the first inning. There’s just some really good hitters in that lineup, and they got me.”
Lynch (0-1) came within a pitch of stranding a runner and getting out of the first inning unscathed.
He’d struck out back-to-back batters to start the night. Then he gave up a two-out single, but appeared poised to limit the damage to just the lone hit.
However, four-time Silver Slugger Award winner Nolan Arenado fouled off a 3-2 slider to force Lynch to throw an eighth pitch of the at-bat. Arenado sent that pitch, a changeup, over the left-field wall for a two-run home run.
“Obviously, Arenado is super hot, and if you give him something good in the zone to hit — I didn’t particularly think it was a terrible pitch, but the guy’s an incredible hitter,” Lynch said.
The next batter, Albert Pujols, ambushed the first pitch from Lynch for a solo home run to left field. It marked Pujols’ first homer since returning to the Cardinals this offseason as a free agent. The home crowd at Busch Stadium gave him a curtain call.
The Royals’ bats pulled Lynch back to even footing before there were even two outs in the next inning.
Perez’s first home run of the season, a 441-foot smash to left-center, started the second inning. That home run, his 201st in the majors, pushed Perez to 2,000 total bases for his career.
Three batters later after a Carlos Santana groundout and a Mondesi infield single, Taylor blasted his first home run of the season in the form of a two-run rocket to center field to make the score 3-3.
“It was awesome,” Lynch said of the offense’s response. “That just kind of gets you back to 0-0. Then you’re not worried about yourself or the runs you gave up. The team, they gave me a chance. That gets you back in the mindset of ‘Let me put up a zero now right after we just scored.’ I was able to do that, and I thought that gave us some momentum moving forward.”
After the Pujols homer, Lynch retired seven of the next eight batters he faced. He finished that stretch with a strikeout of Arenado, swinging at a slider.
The first two batters of the Cardinals’ fourth inning, Pujols and Tommy Edman, reached on singles, but Lynch struck out the next two.
Once again, he came within one strike of escaping without any damage. Instead, Cardinals No. 9 hitter Andrew Knizner hit a 1-2 slider down the left-field line for a three-run home run. Knizner, who emphatically tossed his bat as he started his home-run trot, gave the Cardinals a 6-3 advantage.
Lynch stranded two men on base in his last inning on the mound.
Royals manager Mike Matheny characterized Lynch’s performance as “way better than six runs.”
“He threw the ball really well,” Matheny said. “You could see he was getting the swing-and-miss when he needed to. They were having trouble picking him up. You could tell he had some deception. It really came down to two different two-strike pitches that got more of the plate than what he wanted and ended up costing us.”
Matheny praised Lynch for the way he responded in the aftermath of giving up those three-run innings.
“He’s matured as a pitcher,” Matheny said. “How he’s maintaining his emotion and how he just keeps making good pitches. Just a couple mistakes got him today.”
The score stayed 6-3 until Gallagher, who started at catcher with Perez as the designated hitter, hit a two-out RBI double to left field in the seventh to make it a two-run game.
But the Royals settled for just one run in the seventh. Cardinals reliever Nick Wittgren pitched around Whit Merrifield — a four-pitch walk — with two outs, and got Bobby Witt Jr. to ground out to end the inning.
Perez’s second home run came in the eighth inning, making it a one-run game, but the Royals didn’t get another hit in the final two innings.
The Royals and Cardinals (3-1) are scheduled to play the second game of their two-game set on Wednesday, with first pitch at 12:15 p.m. There are thunderstorms in the forecast, however, that could impact the game.
This story was originally published April 12, 2022 at 9:39 PM.
