Mondesi leads Royals past Tigers 3-2

The Royals continue to be solid against everybody named the Chicago White Sox in 2020.

After beating the Detroit Tigers 3-2 on Friday night, the Royals are now 24-24 against teams not named the Chicago White Sox... and 1-9 against the Sox.

Alberto Mondesi continues to lead the charge, as he reached base all four times tonight, just like he did yesterday. Mondesi is 7 for his last 7 and has raised his on base percentage 30 points in the last 48 hours. He was hitting .178 on September 3, and now it’s up to .241 with a .278 OBP. He’s salvaging what was otherwise a terrible year.

It started early for Kansas City, which got a bases loaded walk by Ryan O’Hearn in the first and an RBI triple from Mondesi in the second. Maikel Franco added a third run on a fifth-inning sacrifice fly.

Detroit got two runs back against reliever Danny Duffy in the seventh. Despite being two days removed from a start, Mike Matheny put Duffy out there and it looked rough, similar to the Yordano Ventura in the Wild Card experiment.

Brad Keller put together an awesome effort in his final start of the year. By twirling six shutout innings, Keller pushed his ERA on the year below 2.50. He will finish the year with a 2.47 ERA in 52 innings. He quietly had one of the best seasons of any American League starting pitcher. By earning the win, he ends his season 5-3.

Jessie Hahn earned the save. Quietly, he’s had an incredible year as well, with an ERA right around 0.50 in 16 innings. It is his second save of the season.

Also, Alex Gordon got two hits tonight. He was 2 for 4. He now has 1,634 in his fabulous Royals career. Hopefully he has a few more in him in his last 18 innings of baseball.

The Royals are 25-33. They have two games left before the Alex Gordon era is officially over. Tomorrow, they’ll go for the series at 6:05 pm behind Carlos Hernandez. He will oppose Matthew Boyd.