Royals crush, lift, crush, lift dreams, win 3-2 in 12 innings

Quick hits

• Kendrys Morales played right field and had a three-hit game
• The Royals challenged a hit by pitch and won. Not sure I’ve seen that happen yet.
• WADE DAVIS BLEW IT
• The Cardinals made three errors

With Lorenzo Cain placed on the disabled list, Kendrys Morales in right field, and a struggling (8.88 ERA in June) Edinson Volquez on the mound, this game had the makings of a laugher. People might have laughed, but not for the expected reasons. Morales played the field and grabbed the second out of the bottom of the first, a routine fly ball from Jhonny Peralta.

That right there is straight shade from Peralta.

Really, not much happened at all for most of the game until the ninth and tenth innings. The Royals and Cardinals decided that they were incapable of scoring a different number of runs in the regulation nine innings, so we got more baseball. You could probably skip some of these words in the middle if you want to get to the good stuff.

The clutch hits abandoned the Royals against starter Carlos Martinez. The Royals got baserunners on in every inning during Martinez’s six-plus innings but could not bring any of them home. Perhaps the best chance came in the fourth inning. Christian Colon walked before a Jarrod Dyson double to put runners on second and third with two outs.

Then NL baseball happened, because stupid NL baseball. Edinson Volquez was up. He hit a grounder up the middle, but Matt Carpenter was shifted a bit and scooped up the grounder to get the out. A similar situation occurred in the fifth - runners on second and third with two outs, and a groundout to Carpenter ended the inning.

Volquez, for his part, kind of allowed something similar. He scattered some hits and walks across the early innings and didn’t record a 1-2-3 inning until the sixth, but he ended up with a clean sheet - 6.2 innings and four strikeouts to go with six hits and one walk. He had Kendrys Morales in right field, and Morales did some things (as mentioned earlier). Here's his first catch. Here's another catch that looked a little Aokian in nature. It would seem that Morales handled himself acceptably. Go Rusty Kuntz!

The Royals finally broke through in the eighth inning against former Royal Jonathan Broxton. Christian Colon singled, Jarrod Dyson walked, and pinch hitter Whit Merrifield singled to load the bases with one out. Alcides Escobar hit a sacrifice fly to bring in Colon and score the first run of the game. No more runs scored, though. Merrifield remained in the game at second base, and Paulo Orlando came in to right field as a defensive substitution.

In the ninth inning, the St. Louis Cardinals put in Mike Leake, a pitcher, to pinch run for Jedd Gyorko. Wade Davis blew it and allowed a run. Kendrys Morales played right field. Everything is wrong.

Then the *fart noise* Cardinals defense reared its head in the tenth. Cheslor Cuthbert walked to lead off the inning. Thoroughly worried about Cuthbert stealing a base, pitcher Seung Hwan Oh threw several pickoff attempts over to first base. One of them failed, and Cuthbert moved to third. Oh walked Dyson to get to Merrifield, who hit a solid grounder to Carpenter at second base. The infield was in, but Carpenter still had the opportunity to handle it.

He didn't.

Then Soria came in to pitch to try not to allow a run.

He allowed a run.

In the distance, screams of "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" could be heard.

Trevor Rosenthal came in to pitch the top of the eleventh. He prevented runs from scoring.

Chien-Ming Wang prevented runs in the bottom of the 11th.

The fifth run of the game finally scored in the top of the 12th. Whit Merrifield and Escobar hit back-to-back doubles against Seth Maness.

Chien-Ming Wang prevented runs in the bottom of the 12th. Game over.

After a low-scoring, uneventful affair, the two teams exchanged single runs in extra innings to make everything sad and happy in alternating fashion. Luckily, the Royals ended on top and move to 41-36.