Royals offense explodes, 11-5 victory is the result

The Royals finally exploded for some offense tonight. The Royals won on the back of a 6-run 7th inning. After a 3 run home run given up to Brandon Moss the previous inning, the Royals found themselves down 5-3. Then the BABIP fairy sprinkled fairy dust everywhere.

Salvador Perez led off the inning with a single, and he was followed by an Omar Infante double. Alcides Escobar, he of the poor leadoff-man stats, slapped a double into right field. Perez and Infante scored. The next play is where it got a little funky. Mike Moustakas hit one of those high chopper ground balls that bounced off the front of the plate toward first base. The ball came down so late that the first baseman couldn't take it himself, so he tossed the ball to the reliever whose name begins with an R. Marc Rzepczynski. R missed the bag with his foot, however, so Moustakas ended up safe. Escobar, seeing the play, decided to run home. The throw was in time, but Escobar's slide knocked the ball out of the catcher's glove. Escobar came up limping, but Rex and Ryan seemed not to notice. For a long time. Something about "Running Royals" and "putting pressure on the defense". Escobar was safe.

With first base open and only one out, the Indians called for an intentional walk to Lorenzo Cain to get to Eric Hosmer. Hosmer grounded into a fielder's choice, which left runners at the corners and two outs for the Cubanoid. Kendrys Morales took a hanging curve and smacked it over the right-center field fence for a three run dong hanging.

Morales wasn't the only Royal to hang dong. The first Royals run came off an Alex Gordon homer to lead off the second inning. Gordon's home run was a hung dong most majestic. He took a meaty fastball, put it in a rocket (which was attached to his bat), and sent it riding on a rabid bull off into the ether. The ball cleared the first level of bleachers behind the right field fence and disappeared into darkness, never to be seen again. Some scattered hits in the 4th, 6th, and 9th innings rounded out the Royals scoring.

Jeremy Guthrie didn't have a great outing. He found the strike zone only about 60% of the time, and he walked another three batters while striking out only three. He went only five innings with 89 pitches. The Indians were able to string some singles together with another Guthrie wild pitch aiding their scoring effort in the bottom of the second. To be honest...Guthrie seems like he could be injured. His velocity continued to be down; he barely touched 92 after the second inning. He threw 36 changeups overall. He got only 4 whiffs out of his 89 pitches. His release point doesn't seem consistent, but it was just slightly more consistent at this point last year. I think it's a legitimate question to ask if he's hurting.

Here is a point of reference for Guthrie's release point near this time last year, also against the Indians.

The only other scoring by the Indians was the aforementioned Moss home run, actually given up by Brandon Finnegan. Chris Young, Jason Frasor, and Yohan Pino held the Indians scoreless for the rest of the game.

The Royals had a fairly balanced attack of 18 hits. Each position player found himself on base at least once, Morales, Perez, and Infante had three hits each, and four other starters had two hits each. Cain was the only starter without a hit, but he had the intentional walk. It's easy to win when your offense does things like this.