Kansas City Royals unable to come through with key plays as Yankees break game open
The extra outs — one taken and one given — haunted the Kansas City Royals in Friday night’s loss to the New York Yankees.
First, there was the out awarded to the Yankees on a play that prompted Royals manager Mike Matheny’s first ejection of the season. Rookie Bobby Witt Jr. made a base-running snafu, but appeared to have used his speed to make up for it. Instead the controversial out call cost the Royals a run.
Then the Royals gave the Yankees an extra out in the seventh on a line-drive at shortstop Nicky Lopez with two outs in a one-run game. The liner from DJ LeMahieu came off the bat at 105.5 mph, but it hit Lopez’s glove. Lopez, a stellar defender, didn’t make the inning-ending catch, and a run scored on the play. The next batter, Yankees slugger Aaron Judge, hit a three-run homer.
Those plays were each potential pivot points that went against the Royals in what turned into a 12-2 blowout loss to the Yankees in the series opener and first game of their homestand in front of an announced 16,460 at Kauffman Stadium.
Thunderstorms and heavy rain caused the game to be called after eight innings.
“We’re looking at, had things gone different on that call and things gone different right there (in the seventh),” Matheny said. “We’re looking at going into the eighth with a 3-3 tie instead of a very lopsided game.”
Royals catcher Salvador Perez went 2 for 4 with a double and an RBI, while Whit Merrifield (1 for 4, run scored) and Bobby Witt Jr. (1 for 3) also hit doubles. Michael A. Taylor (1 for 3) had an RBI.
Royals starting pitcher Kris Bubic bounced back from giving up three runs in the first four batters of the game to salvage a solid outing. The left-hander finished the night having allowed three runs on four hits, three hits in the first inning, and no walks in five innings.
Bubic allowed just one single in his final four innings, right fielder Edward Olivares made a diving catch in the second to help make that a 1-2-3 inning, and Bubic exited the game with the Royals trailing 3-2.
“I think I just stopped thinking, to be honest,” Bubic said of the difference after the first two innings. “I kind of just said ... I’m sick and tired of feeling like this, especially out of the gate. From there it was just trust what you have. Finally didn’t walk anybody, so that’s a good sign. Obviously, you want to get out to a better start. I don’t want to get in the habit of continually doing that over and over again.”
Bubic gave up three first-inning runs on two very loud and long blasts off the bats of Anthony Rizzo and Giancarlo Stanton.
Rizzo, who entered the night with an AL-best eight home runs, smashed an 0-1 fastball 415 feet to center field for a two-run homer.
Stanton followed Rizzo’s two-run shot with a solo homer that traveled 429 feet and banged off the back wall of the visiting bullpen.
Bubic threw 24 pitches in the first inning. He didn’t walk a batter, and all three hits he gave up were extra-base hits. In two of his three previous starts this season, he didn’t make it more than two innings.
“Not an ideal way to start, kind of like how it has been,” Bubic said. “That’s pretty similar to how I’ve felt this whole April. But I had to dig deep there and not let things spiral like they have been. To give the team a chance — that always remains the No. 1 goal, no matter how pretty or how ugly it looks.
“I didn’t have much those first two innings, but something clicked to where Salvy (Perez) was sticking with me and the defense was picking me up big time, especially those first two innings, to kind of bail me out in a sense to where I could find things and get in a better rhythm and kind of go from there.”
Merrifield doubled and scored on a Perez two-out double in the bottom of the first to get the Royals into the scoring column. Perez’s double snapped an 0-for-16 stretch for him at the plate.
Witt’s one-out double in the second put a runner in scoring position, but Yankees pitcher Nestor Cortes got Witt in a rundown as he broke for third base.
While Witt out-ran the defense to third base, he got ruled out for coming off the bag even though second baseman Gleyber Torres ran into Witt and pushed them both off the bag.
That ruling set off Matheny and led to his ejection from the game.
“I don’t know how else you handle that situation,” Matheny said. “You know you’ve been wronged, and there’s nothing that can be done about it. At least, you’re going to hear it. So I’m sure we’ll get some long (explanations), lots of everybody’s opinions on exactly how that works. But I watched it again and again. He’s on the base. He has control of it. He just out-ran a guy. And that guy had nowhere to go, I get that too. That’s not our fault.”
Olivares singled in the same at-bat during which Witt got called out at third base. Olivares then scored on a two-out RBI single to pull the Royals within a run, 3-2.
The score remained 3-2 until the seventh when LeMahieu lined the two-out RBI single off Lopez’s glove with Royals reliever Dylan Coleman on the mound. Then Judge’s homer extended the lead to 7-2, and the Yankees tacked on five more runs in the eighth with the help of a Torres two-run homer off Royals reliever Jake Brentz.
The teams continue the three-game weekend series on Saturday evening. First pitch is scheduled for 6:10 p.m. The pitching matchup features Yankees right-hander Gerrit Cole (1-0, 4.00) against Royals right-hander Carlos Hernández (0-0, 6.43).
This story was originally published April 29, 2022 at 11:56 PM.
