Royals lose by lots of runs to Astros

The Royals lost on Wednesday night. It was 9-0 in the eighth inning, which is when I am posting this story.

They still haven’t won a road series this year, and their team record fell to 13-25.

They should be better than that. I firmly believe that this team is significantly better than the 2018 squad, yet through 40 games or so, they sport near identical records. I think that as summer goes on, this team will heat up and get noticeably better, but things just aren’t going well right now.

This was over pretty quickly, as Jorge Lopez got spanked for 2.1 innings before being pulled with six runs already on the board. The Astros led, 6-0, after just three innings. George Springer hit a homer. Michael Brantley, who absolutely abuses the Royals, hit two of them. Carlos Correa hit one as well. The Astros’ offense is ridiculous, but we already knew that.

We didn’t know that the Royals would be completely incompetent against Brad Peacock, who entered with an ERA north of five. He proceeded to fire seven innings of shutout ball, striking out 12 in the process. It was a completely dominant performance.

Lopez: 2.1 innings, six runs, two strikeouts, 74 pitches. His ERA ballooned to 6.07 in eight starts now. In 43 innings, he’s allowed 10 homers. He’s allowed at least four runs in five straight starts. None of this is good.

The highlights: Billy Hamilton hit a double. He and Terrance Gore hit singles. Maybe they got more hits in the ninth inning. But through eight innings, they had three hits as a squad. It was pitiful.

Also in the highlights: Richard Lovelady had a sexy seventh inning, striking out two and retiring all three hitters he faced. So that was that.

Oh yeah, and Ned got ejected! Martin Maldonado got called out on a borderline third strike and Ned went running out there, said something that you can’t say on TV, and got the boot. It was as much fire as anyone showed all evening.

At least we’ll always have the 2015 ALDS.

Chris Owings is down to .143. Nicky Lopez hit a homer in triple-A tonight. Just saying.

Up next: Philadelphia comes to Kauffman Stadium for the first time in forever. Homer Bailey and Jake Arrieta are the probables for a Friday night, 7:15 pm CDT start.