Royals remain winless on road trip with 7-2 loss to Oakland

It’s been a bad, bad season for the Royals. But it’s only going to get worse, for other reasons, if they don’t get some of their prospects up here to get some experience.

The Royals lost 7-2 to the A’s tonight. They are 0-5 on the road trip and have lost six in a row overall. The game featured some banner plays by the “why the hell are they still on the roster” tier of players, which I’ll make sure to touch on later.

The A’s built a 6-0 lead on Jake Junis before Mike Moustakas hit a two-run home run in the eighth inning. That is literally the only thing you need to know about this game. Oakland got a seventh run after Paulo Orlando screwed up a line-drive-turned-triple and then Alcides Escobar let an infield chopper bounce off his glove later in the evening. It happens.

Jorge Soler fouled a ball off of his foot and left hurt in the second inning. Abraham Almonte replaced him and hit fifth all night. So that was fear-inducing.

Junis: 5.1 innings, 10 hits, six runs, five strikeouts. The ERA ballooned over 4 to 4.05. He is also under .500 in the record department, now at 5-6.

Frankie Montas allowed two runs in 7.2 innings. His last start was on Sunday, when he shut the Royals out over eight innings. This guy has made exactly four major league starts and the Royals have gotten him for one run-producing at bat in 15.2 innings.

As promised, here are my “why the hell are they still on the roster” notes:

Alcides Escobar is freaking awful. 0 for 4 tonight to keep up his MLB lead in outs made thus far this year. He’s hitting .225/.272/.322 and he’s played every single game since September 2015 - that’s 397 games in a row! They hit him second tonight. He has to be the worst player in the history of baseball to bat second for anybody. The team is 21-43. It’s clearly the right time to play the young guys (YOUR BEST PROSPECT IS THE SAME POSITION AND IS RED HOT IN TRIPLE-A AND HAD A WALKOFF SINGLE LAST NIGHT FOR OMAHA WHY IS HE NOT HERE YET).

Paulo Orlando is freaking awful. The man hit some triples in 2015 and is hitting .190 since Opening Day of last year. Instead of giving literally any of your young guys a shot, they call up the 32-year-old AAA outfielder that isn’t any good. He completely whiffed on a ball hit to center field that turned into a triple. He has no place on a major league roster.

Ryan Goins hit four times and made five outs, because of course he did. The fact that he’s still here is pretty baffling too, until you realize that he has a better slash (by a decent margin) than Outcedies Outscobar.

You need to DFA all three of them. All of them. Now. Get the young guys up here. Start Adalberto Mondesi every day for the rest of the season. Get Rosell Herrera up here. And whenever Bubba Starling is healthy (which might be a pipe dream), get him here and get Paulo Orlando on a bus to anywhere but Kansas City. These next 98 games are going to be hideous. You might as well learn some things about your young guys in the process, because starting a trio of crappy players that are 30 or older isn’t doing a darn thing for you, now or future.

On Wednesday, Alcides Escobar will start his 400th game in a row for the Royals. I seriously give up.

OTHER POSITIVES FROM THE GAME: Hey, those A’s jerseys were awesome.

Tomorrow is Saturday. Danny Duffy starts against Kansas City legend Trevor Cahill. The must-watch TV event starts at 3:05 pm CDT.