The Royals lose for 13th time in the last 17 games

On Twitter, I asked if the recap tonight should be a nonsense one or a regular recap. Over 500 people voted, and 7 in 10 people said that, yeah, we should have a nonsense recap! For those of you who don’t know, these are generally recaps that have nothing to do with baseball, like the time I lifted a section of my paper of Franz Liszt and gave it to Old Man Duggan for the recap.

Alas, I am sad to disappoint: no nonsense recap. Not tonight. Of course, the Royals lost 6-4, to the Texas Rangers proudly clawing back from a five-run deficit to checks notes still lose the game by multiple runs. I will say, if this was a blowout, you probably would have gotten the nonsense recap. But they made it close enough that I didn’t want to go nuts and then have it be made null by an exciting comeback that deserved a recap.

Tonight’s recap will be very short. I confess, I am just very, very tired. Brad Keller has been very good so far, but he had an off night tonight. I’m not too worried—he wasn’t gonna have a two point something ERA the whole year—but when the rest of the team is so bad and your good players scuffle, you have no margin for error. Keller gave up two home runs to Corey Seager and five overall. Keller did make it through 5.2 innings, which is indeed a boon for the bullpen.

On the offensive side, the Royals were...mediocre. They began the first inning with three consecutive strikeouts, which was a bad omen. Bobby Witt Jr. struck out three times himself tonight in his return to his home metro area. The Royals scratched one run across in the fifth inning thanks to an MJ Melendez infield single and three more in the seventh after consecutive errors by the Rangers, but they only had one extra base hit tonight. Gonna need to do better than that.

The Royals are 9-18 but, thanks to the Detroit Tigers, are somehow not yet last in the division.