Craig Kimbrel’s latest outing with the Royals ended in a scene nobody wanted to see.
The veteran reliever was brought in by manager Matt Quatraro to try to lock down a 4-3 lead over the Miami Marlins in the top of the seventh Thursday night, but before he could even face Kyle Stowers, Kimbrel crouched near the mound and vomited. The broadcast quickly cut away.
“Now we are not going to show you Craig Kimbrel because it is so hot outside, he’s very, very sick on the mound right now,” Marlins play-by-play announcer Kyle Sielaff said. “So we will give him a little bit of privacy here.”
Kimbrel, who is pitching for his third big-league club this season, recorded just two outs before leaving because of nausea, according to the Royals. Kansas City still finished off a 7-3 win.
The conditions at Kauffman Stadium were brutal: 97 degrees at game time, with humidity around 50 percent.
“Started selling Buicks,” analyst and former major leaguer Jeff Nelson quipped.
Kimbrel’s night was the most visible heat-related moment, but he’s not the only one who has been undone by the weather this season. On Monday, home-plate umpire Manny Gonzalez left the Reds-Padres game with heat exhaustion and needed help getting off the field.
That game included a 14-minute delay, with temperatures at 90 degrees and humidity at 61 percent in Cincinnati. Earlier this year, Tampa Bay right-hander Jonathan Heasley threw up on the mound in his lone appearance of the 2026 campaign and still completed the outing.
The scene also brought back a recent memory from last season, when Elly De La Cruz vomited on the field during the fourth inning of a mid-June game in St. Louis. He later came through with a go-ahead, two-run homer three innings after that.
“He drank a bunch of water - I mean a bunch,” Reds manager Terry Francona said then. “He went right out and got rid of it.
Probably could’ve made some money - that’s game-used. It’s probably worth something.”
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Lynch said his mindset changes once he gets past those first few frames, and that difference has become part of the story for Kansas City every time he takes the mound. Manager Matt Quatraro has pointed to the difficulty of making that reliever-to-starter transition, but he also still believes Lynch can sort it out, which leaves the Royals watching to see whether the next step is a quicker fix or more of the same early trouble. [Read more 🡒]