KC Royals hit into one of the most unique (and ugly) double plays you’ll ever see
The Royals put their opening day crowd of 39,393 through a wringer Thursday afternoon at Kauffman Stadium.
Fans cheered wildly and also did a little booing during the Royals’ 7-4 loss to the Cleveland Guardians in 10 innings.
This win-probability chart shows the back-and-forth nature of the game between the AL Central champions.
KC’s ninth-inning rally forced extra innings and temporarily eased the sting of a strange double play — that the Royals ran themselves into — an inning earlier.
Trailing 4-3, Cavan Biggio drew a walk after falling behind 0-2 in the count. Royals teammate Dairon Blanco then stole second as a pinch-runner. He took third when Kyle Isbel reached first after pitcher Hunter Gaddis bobbled the ball.
Set up with first and third and no one out, the Royals were poised to tie the game and possibly pull ahead. Instead they finished the frame without scoring after the Guardians turned a weird 5-2-5-4-6 double play.
KC’s Jonathan India hit a grounder to third baseman Jose Ramirez, who threw home and got Blanco in a rundown. He was tagged at third and then Isbel strayed too far off second base and was caught in a second rundown.
This was a strange way to run into a double play.
Isbel admitted he should have stayed a little closer to second base.
“That’s a play we work on in spring all the time,” Isbel said. “He’s going to home, running that direction, my job (is) to get to third base. ... I’ve seen that play work a thousand times and it just didn’t go right today.”
Royals manager Matt Quatraro shared his assessment of the play.
“It’s not a true contact play, but the rule of thumb is if it’s a hard ground ball, that’s a double play ball, you go to the plate,” Quatraro noted. “So Blanco, in retrospect, he should just keep going so they only get the one out. That’s the reason you go on a hard hit ball, because you know they’re going to get one instead of two (outs).
“So Izzy was trying to make an effort play to get to third so we could have second and third. But they actually executed there as well. So there are a lot of things in retrospect we could have done differently, but in the moment, that’s what they were trying to do.”
Isbel said when Blanco got into the rundown, he was trying to be aggressive and keep the Royals rally alive.
“I could have waited a little bit longer,” Isbel said of going to third. “Just live and learn, and I’m gonna keep making aggressive mistakes.”
This story was originally published March 27, 2025 at 5:43 PM.
