Kansas City ends their first home stand with a record of 1-6
Peaks and valley offense is mostly to blame for the poor start. Kansas City has had two double digit scoreless inning runs already. To start the season the Royals went 19 innings without scoring. Then before today’s eighth inning rally Kansas City was on an even longer 23 inning drought. Today, the Royals not only struggled to score early in the game, the starting pitching gave up runs in the first inning.
Jordan Lyles was on the bump to start the final game of the four game series and the Blue Jays jumped on him quickly. The Blue Jays got two early baserunners and it was the red hot Matt Chapman who drove them in. Chapman almost hit his sixth home run of the season with the ball hitting the top of the fence. instead he would have t settle for a double. His double put him at six, leading all of the MLB.
Toronto would strike again in the second inning. Lyles’ defense failed him to extend the second inning as MJ Melendez dropped a foul ball that hit his glove. That catch would have ended the inning. Instead, Bo Bichette was able to hit a hard line drive to right field to drive in Toronto’s third run of the game.
It took to the third inning for Lyles to have a scoreless inning. In the fourth, Lyles left his two seam fastball up in the zone for Cavan Biggio to bomb a ball 400 feet to right field. In the fifth Vladimir Guerrero Jr. got his second hit of the day, this time hitting a ball 436 feet making the score 5-0.
It was not all bad for Lyles. He was able to strike out nine batters. He would go five and two thirds innings and throw 106 pitches.
The bullpen would give up the sixth and final Toronto run of the day. In the seventh inning Jose Cuas gave up a a couple of hits to allow Bichette to come in to score.
Kansas City’s offense woke up in the eighth inning. Bobby Whitt Jr. hit his first long ball of the 2023 season. The next four batters would get on base as Vinnie Pasquantino and Edward Olivares would drive in one run each.
This is when the poor batting with runners in scoring position showed its ugly face again. Reyes would hit for Michael Massey and ground out to third. After a Toronto pitching change, Hunter Dozier and Nick Pratto would strike out. That was the last chance for Kansas City to put any runs on the board.
Kansas City will head out on their first road trip of the season. They will head out to San Francisco to take on the Giants with first pitch at 3:35
