Quick Hits
- Salvador Perez hit a three-run homer
- Yordano Ventura held it together just enough to get six innings
- The bullpen shut it down in the later innings
It started with a burst in the first. Alcides Escobar led off the game with a single, though it was not on the first pitch. It's cool though because he got caught stealing. Whatever.
The next batter, Lorenzo Cain, got hit by a pitch on his knee. It. Looked. Painful. Cain managed to get back up and take his base. Eric Hosmer next hit a grounder through the right side to move Cain to third.
Kendrys Morales followed with a walk to load the bases for Alex Gordon, who hit a relatively deep sac fly to center field to score Cain. With two runners still on base, Salvador Perez received a meaty hanging slider a little bit up. Perez slammed the pitch way, way out in left field. Way out. Michael Pineda knew it right off the bat. I'm pretty sure everyone did. I'm not sure the ball has landed yet.
Cheslor Cuthbert hit a single, but Christian Colon struck out to end the inning. Stupid rally killing homers.
Yordano Ventura had himself a rough second inning, in a way. Carlos Beltran led off with a solo homer, but it was a towering fly ball that just barely cleared the fence in right field. I'm not sure that's a home run in most other stadiums, but that's baseball. We like to play on different fields because tradition.
Unfortunately, that was not the end of it. Aaron Hicks singled with one out and advanced to second on a ground out. Chase Headley blooped a doinker into no-man's land in short left field to bring in Hicks. Ventura continued to struggle, walking the next two batters, but he managed to induce a bases-loaded ground out from Starlin Castro to end the inning.
Ventura ran into a little trouble again in the fourth but got out unscathed. After a single and a wild pitch and a ground out, there was a man on third with only one out. Headley grounded to Hosmer, who held Hicks at third base before recording the out. Ventura got another out from Ben Gamel to avoid giving up any runs.
A walk, a double, and a ground out brought in another Yankee run in the fifth, but that was all the scoring from the Yankees allowed by Ventura. Though he really labored, Ventura crucially made it through six innings while giving up three runs. He walked three and struck out one while throwing only 53 percent of his pitches for strikes. League average, last I checked, is somewhere north of 60 percent. It was not necessarily pretty, but it worked well enough.
The Royals would not get another man to third base until the sixth inning, and they capitalized. All with two outs. Perez walked to lead off the inning but was erased on a Cuthbert double play. A Colon walk and a Jarrod Dyson single knocked Michael Pineda out of the game, bringing in Nick Goody. Goody is a younger (age 24, almost 25) right-hander who is just getting his feet wet in the big leagues.
Goody hit Escobar and gave up a two-run single to Cain before exiting. Goody left a curveball up for Cain to smack back up the middle. Goody sorta-kinda attempted to stop the ball with his bare hand. Good thing he didn't, as Cain smoked the pitch. Cain's really starting to hit the ball hard again, at least anecdotally. Phil Coke relieved Goody and got Hosmer to ground out.
The Yankees were not the only beneficiaries tonight of the Yankee short porch in right. Kendrys Morales, about whom many fans seem the most worried, went opposite field against Coke and made the score 7-3.
And 7-3 it would stay. Danny Duffy, Kelvin Herrera, and Wade Davis locked down 7-8-9. The offense was good enough to cover some shaky starting pitching, though the Royals' starter allowed only three runs.
So can anyone tell me why the radio broadcast kept talking about Rod Carew?