The Royals walked into Dodger Stadium with a heavyweight on the mound and didn’t blink much at all.
Against reigning back-to-back World Series champions and reigning back-to-back American League Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal, Kansas City kept grinding through tough at-bats and made his Los Angeles debut far more uncomfortable than the setting suggested. The Royals still came up short in a 6-5 loss, but they forced Skubal to work and kept punching back.
“I thought all of our at-bats, we competed well against him,” Royals manager Matt Quatraro said. “He's obviously tough.
We've seen him a bunch of times. I thought we drove up his pitch count, fouled some balls off, laid off some tough pitches.
Get him out of there after five with three runs is something.”
Kansas City opened with immediate annoyance. Nick Loftin started the game with a two-strike single, Bobby Witt Jr. followed by reaching on a fielder’s choice and swiping second, and that set the table for Jac Caglianone’s two-strike RBI single up the middle.
Caglianone kept the pressure on in the third, when Skubal hung an 0-2 slider over the plate. Caglianone didn’t miss it, sending a 110.8 mph shot into the right-field seats for a two-run homer.
He finished 2-for-4 with three RBIs and has now hit safely in all nine games in August, batting .417 over that stretch.
A big reason for the recent surge has been a quieter swing approach and fewer empty at-bats. Since the All-Star break, Caglianone’s strikeout rate has dropped to 14.8%, bringing his season mark down from 29.2% to 26.5%.
“Just trying to shrink the zone,” Caglianone said. “Once you get the two strikes, just battle your tail off.”
The Royals had another answer in them after the game slipped away in the sixth. Max Muncy’s three-run double erased their lead, but Kansas City came right back in the seventh. Michael Massey led off with a single, and Kyle Isbel then homered for the first time since April 22 to tie it at 5-5.
“They threw eight innings of lefties up there,” Quatraro said. “And for Massey and [Isbel] to produce two runs there to tie the game after you're down, I mean, I'm not surprised the way these guys stay in the game. They stay in the fight every night.”
Los Angeles answered again, and this time the Royals couldn’t recover. Freddie Freeman delivered a two-strike RBI single in the bottom of the seventh to put the Dodgers back in front, and Kansas City managed only the minimum over the final two innings.
Noah Cameron gave the Royals a steady start before the sixth unraveled. He was effective early, but the inning got away after a single and a double, and Quatraro turned to the bullpen before Muncy’s bases-clearing double changed the game.
“I think just not getting that last out,” Cameron said. “Obviously I had a good inning kind of until then, striking out Mookie [Betts], a good ground ball with [Tommy] Edman.
But, yeah, just obviously having to finish it. Getting behind 3-1, just not really ideal in that situation.
And then obviously a good swing on a pitch that I left kind of over the plate. Just got to be better, got to get that last out.”
Cameron went 5 2/3 innings and allowed four earned runs on six hits with two walks and two strikeouts.
“We're not done with this year,” Cameron said of the team’s resilience on Monday. “We got a lot of fight, got a lot of good players, good swingers.
We're just trying to obviously survive. But obviously we're trying to win and we're trying to get better every day.
And I thought we did that really well tonight. Battled the whole night and obviously a good team and just got to tip your hat and move on to tomorrow.”
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Jac Caglianones Surge Just Created A Royals Question They Cant Ignore
Jac Caglianones first full season has started to look a lot more like the version the Royals imagined when they took him in the first round. The former first-round pick has already built a .258/.326/.458 line with 20 home runs, and since July 30 he has been on a tear, hitting .396 with a 230 wRC+ while filling in at first base during Vinnie Pasquantinos injury absence.
What makes the surge so interesting is that it has come while Caglianone has been in a different defensive spot, and the Royals now have a question worth digging into as they map out the rest of his role. His production has taken on a different shape depending on where hes lined up, and the way he is attacking at-bats in those games may force Kansas City to think hard about how it wants to deploy one of its most important young bats. [Read more 🡒]
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Gomez has built that momentum with a strong showing in the Dominican Summer League, enough to earn All-Star honors and put him on the radar as one of the organizations most intriguing young players. Kansas City still has plenty of other names worth tracking, from Josh Hammond and Ramon Ramirez to David Shields, Zion Rose, Taylor Rabe and Jack Slightom, but the rise of Gomez gives the system a new headliner and raises the obvious question of how fast his stock can keep climbing. [Read more 🡒]
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This season, though, the fit has become harder to trust. Ercegs strikeout rate has dipped, the walks have piled up and his results have turned rough enough to raise a familiar Royals concern: whether they have enough reliable late-inning pitching to lean on when games tighten up. He is still under club control through 2029, so this is not a short-term problem Kansas City can simply pitch around, which makes the next stretch for both Erceg and the bullpen even more important. [Read more 🡒]