Lynch gives up three runs early as the Kansas City Royals drop nightcap at Baltimore
The Kansas City Royals couldn’t overcome an early deficit in the second game of their twin bill with the Baltimore Orioles on Sunday.
Rookie left-hander Daniel Lynch ran into early trouble, expending a lot of energy — and a large chunk of his pitch count — just to get into the fourth inning. The three runs he allowed in the first inning proved enough to sink the Royals 4-2 in front of an announced 19,893 at Orioles Park at Camden Yards.
Hunter Dozier (2 for 4) had a triple, scored a run and drove in a run in the loss. Salvador Perez (2 for 4, run scored) had two hits, including a double, and scored a run. Emmanuel Rivera had two hits, and rookie catcher MJ Melendez hit his first double in the majors.
For Lynch, it was his shortest outing of the season. He pitched 3 2/3 innings — he’d gone at least five in his previous four starts — and needed 94 pitches to get that far, in part due to a season-high four walks.
“That was another one that was better than what it looked,” Royals manager Mike Matheny said of Lynch’s outing. “He made some good pitches. I don’t even know how many pitches they fouled off. It had to be over 30. He got into some good counts, made pretty good pitches and they started fouling them off.
“He fought. He didn’t have his best stuff, but he fought and competed. He kept us in the game. He had a couple times when it could have gotten out of hand, but he made good pitches when he had to and he kept us in it.”
The Orioles fouled off 30 pitches from Lynch in less than four innings.
Lynch gave up three runs (two earned) in the first inning as the Orioles put the first four batters of the inning on base via a base hit, an infield single, a walk and a single.
A passed ball charged against Melendez allowed the first run to score from third and put the other two runners on second and third (both eventually scored).
“I felt like, other than the first batter, I actually made really good pitches to everyone,” Lynch said of his first inning. “Just kind of some balls fell in. Then (I was) just trying not to get my pitch count up. I felt like it was high in every inning. I’m not really looking too much at that inning, honestly, because I felt like the majority of it was just baseball. Stuff like that happens.”
The Orioles second and third runs came on sacrifice flies by Ramon Urias and Tyler Nevin. Nevin’s fly ball was caught in foul territory with Royals right fielder Kyle Isbel’s momentum carrying him towards the netting.
Lynch allowed three of the four hits against him in the first inning and one of his four walks in that frame as well.
“I felt the same the whole time,” Lynch said. “The first inning is just another inning. That one happened to be the one where maybe they had a couple balls fall in and they scratched a couple across, but every inning kind of felt the same today, honestly.”
Lynch said he felt like he was working ahead of guys and all of his pitches were “there,” but he didn’t put batters away as frequently as he would have liked.
He said he felt like his fastball, which resulted in a swing and miss 33 percent of the time batters swung on Sunday, was as good as it has been this season.
“I think he and MJ were trying to get on track a little bit too,” Matheny said of the difference in the first inning. “It’s just a rhythm. Whenever you have another catcher, there’s something about that. I think they kind of picked up the feel. Had a little trouble getting it going, but did a nice job adjusting.”
The Royals cut into the three-run deficit in the second inning when Hunter Dozier’s high drive to the wall in right field wasn’t caught and he legged out a leadoff triple. Whit Merrifield drove him in with a sacrifice fly and made the score 3-1.
Joel Payamps took over for Lynch in the fourth and pitched 1 1/3 innings and allowed one run on three hits.
The Orioles led 4-1 going into the sixth when Perez smacked a two-out double to left field. Dozier followed with an RBI single to cut the deficit to two runs, 4-2, and it stayed the way until the final out.
“We need to enjoy the game and play hard,” Perez said. “Good things are going to happen. Bad things are going to happen. Control what we can control, run the bases hard, play hard, play defense, no mental errors. Hitting — it’s up and down. That’s the way that I see that.”
Royals relievers Dylan Coleman (one inning) and Gabe Speier (two innings) combined for three innings of scoreless relief following Payamps.
The teams were scheduled to conclude their three-game series on Monday with a makeup game of Saturday’s rainout. Right-hander Carlos Hernández (0-1, 6.00) will start for the Royals, while the Orioles will give the ball to right-hander Tyler Wells (0-2, 4.50).
This story was originally published May 8, 2022 at 7:38 PM.
