An 8-3 final can make a game look comfortable in hindsight. This one wasn’t. The Royals had to claw through a messy middle before the sixth inning turned the whole night on its head and sent them to another win over the Guardians.
Daniel Lynch IV got the start, and the early signs were shaky. He opened with a quick first inning even after Isaac Collins misplayed a routine groundout, then the Royals left Salvador Perez on base after a leadoff double in the second.
In the bottom half, the trouble really arrived. Jo Adell led off with a walk - and he walks less than 5% of the time - before Angel Martinez launched a homer to left to put the Royals behind for the first time in the series.
Lynch then walked David Fry, and Bobby Witt Jr. followed with a throwing error on a possible double-play ball that probably still should have been caught by Collins at second. The Royals did turn the double play on the next play, but the inning had already gone sideways.
Lynch worked around a leadoff bunt single in the third and gave up a one-out double in the fourth before his night ended. His final line: 3.1 innings, 3 hits, 2 walks and 3 strikeouts.
That wasn’t enough, and honestly, it could have been worse. The bullpen, at least for a while, kept the game within reach by not allowing another baserunner until the ninth.
The offense had to do its part, and it finally showed signs of life in the fifth against Foster Griffin. Nick Loftin doubled off the top of the wall in left, Tyler Tolbert reached on an infield single, and Isaac Collins lined a double down the third-base line to tie the game. The Royals still stranded him there, though, and with the way the game had gone up to that point, another letdown felt very possible.
Then came the sixth, and the entire mood flipped.
Colin Holderman entered with a 2.25 ERA and 20 shutdowns against only 5 meltdowns in 52 relief appearances this season. Bobby Witt Jr. greeted him with a rocket back up the middle at 110.3 MPH.
Jac Caglianone followed with a single to right at 111.8 MPH, and Witt never hesitated as he charged for third. Salvador Perez then crushed a ball into the left-center gap at 107.6 MPH for an RBI double that gave the Royals the lead with runners on second and third and nobody out.
Nick Loftin kept it going with a grounder up the middle at 103.8 MPH. Brayan Rocchio got in front of it, but the ball took a funny hop and popped into the air, allowing Loftin to beat it out for an infield single and load the bases.
John Rave pinch-hit for Tyler Tolbert and eventually rolled a grounder to José Ramírez, who let it slip through his legs while trying to start a double play. That brought home another run and pushed the Royals ahead by two, still with the bases loaded and nobody out.
Isaac Collins followed with a routine groundout that at least avoided a double play, and then Josh Rojas pinch-hit for Matthew Lugo, who struck out in both of his at-bats. The Guardians turned to left-hander Erik Sabrowski, but Rojas came through anyway.
As the source put it: “He didn’t even mean to swing at it! It’s ridiculous that he made contact with it.
But not only that, it dropped where he could hardly have thrown it better to drive in a pair more.”
That swing broke it open.
Rojas added another moment in the eighth, when John Rave singled in his second at-bat and Rojas took a full swing and “see what that felt like.”
The bullpen did the rest. Anthony Gose worked 1.2 perfect innings for the win, his first since 2022.
Craig Kimbrel threw a perfect sixth after the Royals took the lead. John Schreiber delivered a perfect seventh, and Nate Pearson struck out a batter in a perfect eighth, stretching the bullpen’s run to 14 straight outs.
With the Royals already up by six, Alex Lange allowed a run on two hits and a strikeout.
Afterward, Rojas summed it up with: “This is baseball!”
It also gave the Royals a guaranteed winning road trip. If they can complete the sweep tomorrow, they’d be 5.5 games back of a playoff spot with 24 to play. That’s still a long climb, but it’s a much better place than they were at the start of the month, and a far cry from being 10.5 games back before this 13-2 stretch in Anaheim of Los Angeles two weeks ago.
Winning again won’t be easy. Seth Lugo, whom the source initially noted a game early, is scheduled to pitch tomorrow afternoon.
The matchup gets tougher too, with All-Star left-hander Parker Messick set to go for the Guardians. But if the Royals can finish the sweep, they’d head into a final weekend that could actually mean something, with a chance to be fighting division rivals at home for that last playoff spot.
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