Kansas City Royals win a wild one in 11 innings as Whit Merrifield delivers clutch hitting
In a wild game that featured freakishly skilled athletes such as Los Angeles Angels superstar Mike Trout and Kansas City Royals rookie sensation Bobby Witt Jr. doing things that made people shake their heads, while Royals veteran Carlos Santana showed what it means to be a professional hitter with a four-hit performance, everyone temporarily took a backseat to the Angels’ force of nature, Shohei Ohtani.
Last year’s unanimous American League MVP, Ohtani hit his second three-run home run with one out in the ninth inning against the Royals most-reliable relief pitcher, Scott Barlow, to tie the score, send the home crowd into a frenzy and the game into extra innings.
Then in the 11th inning with the game’s momentum teetering on every pitch, the Royals’ steady stalwart and leadoff hitter extraordinaire Whit Merrifield drove in the go-ahead run and scored the eventual winning run in a 12-11 extra-inning win over the Angels in front of an announced 20,189 in the second game of a three-game series at Angel Stadium on Tuesday night.
“It was one of the most fun games I’ve ever been a part of, top to bottom,” Witt said. “There was just a lot of energy going on. That’s just kind of how baseball is, it’s a blast.”
Witt went 3 for 5 with two home runs — both to the right-center-field side of the outfield — a double off the wall, four RBIs and two runs scored in his first multi-home-run game in the major leagues.
Witt became the second-youngest Royals player to have a multi-homer game at 22 years old. Former Royals first baseman Eric Hosmer recorded his first multi-homer game at 21 years, 311 days old on Aug. 31, 2011. Witt also joined Alex Gordon and Hosmer as Royals players with at least 10 home runs and 10 stolen bases in their rookie season.
“I was just trying to put good swings on the ball, pick out good pitches and let the rest happen and try to help the team as much as I can,” Witt said. “I felt like in the past few games I was pressing a little bit. So just come back, relax and just be myself.”
Santana went 4 for 5 with a home run, five RBIs and two runs scored for the Royals (25-42).
In his last 15 games, Santana has slashed .327/.459/.510 with two home runs, eight RBIs, 12 walks and six strikeouts. This has come after Santana slashed .122/.287/.195 through his first 25 games of this season.
“I know what kind of player I am,” Santana said. “It’s a long season, 162 games. I know I’m a slow starter, but my mentality is keeping my head up and trying to help my team and try to finish the best we can.”
The Royals let what was a five-run lead going into the bottom of the sixth inning get away from them, and team leader and star catcher Salvador Perez left the game in the third inning with a thumb injury, but the Royals still collected their fifth win in the past six games and assured a winning record on the nine-game West Coast road trip.
“Any time anything happens to any teammate — they go out of the game and you know something is wrong, it kind of hits you,” Witt said. “But then it also is kind of like now you’re going to play for that guy too, next-man-up mentality. That’s kind of how we go about our business here. So that’s kind of what we did.”
Royals starting pitcher Jonathan Heasley allowed four runs on four hits and two walks. Two of the hits he gave up were home runs, and he gave up three of his four runs in the sixth inning, all scored on a three-run home run by Ohtani.
Heasley’s only two walks of the night came in the lead-up to Ohtani first homer of the night with the Royals up 6-1.
“I felt really good, obviously, through those first five,” Heasley said. “Then I just kind of ran into some trouble there in the sixth. The walks is really what makes me more frustrated. The home run, it is what it is. If he hits a solo home run, we’ve got a (6-2) game. That’s fine. A three-run home run hurts a little bit.
“You’ve just got to tip your cap to him tonight. He’s a special talent. There’s few guys like that in the league. There just happen to be two of them in one lineup here.”
The Angels turned Ohtani’s home run into a spark. They scored four runs in that inning to pull within a run, 6-5.
Witt’s RBI double put the Royals in front 7-5 in the seventh, but the Angels added two more in the bottom half to tie the score 7-7.
The Royals took the lead back in the eighth when Hunter Dozier doubled and scored on a Santana RBI single after a balk call extended Santana’s at-bat. That balk call later fueled a tirade by Angels manager Phil Nevin and earned him an ejection.
The Royals led 10-7 after Witt hit his second homer, a two-run smash in the ninth inning.
However, Ohtani’s ninth-inning blast came after an infield single and walk and tied the game 10-10.
With the automatic runner on second base in extra innings, neither team scored in the 10th. Merrifield smacked an RBI double to start the 11th, advanced on a grounder to the right side of the infield by Andrew Benintendi and then scored on a high broken-bat chopper on the infield by Kyle Isbel, the fourth player to bat in the cleanup spot for the Royals in the game.
“Somebody was yelling on the bench every inning, ‘Keep punching! Keep punching!’ I thought that was very appropriate for a game like that,” Royals manager Mike Matheny said. “It felt like you were in the middle of a heavyweight bout, just going back and forth. I just love when they show that kind of tenacity and resiliency and the fight. That’s all you can say about a game like that.”
This story was originally published June 22, 2022 at 1:11 AM.