Royals falter in yet another series, lose 7-4 to Astros

In the Royals’ last 11 series, they are 1-9-1. One win. One split. Nine losses.

Totally normal when your director of player personnel is in his 16th season, right?

The Royals lost again, 7-4 to the Houston Astros. They lost yet another series and have won just one set since the last week of April.

Jonathan Heasley pitched fine when you consider the offense he was against. He gave up three runs on seven hits in 6.0 innings of work. He did manage to strike out five in a perfectly average start. The Royals were trailing 3-0 when he made his final pitch.

Salvador Perez tried to will the Royals back by himself all afternoon, as he socked a two-run homer for the second day in a row. Houston’s Pedro Alvarez answered with an absolutely ridiculous 456-foot blast that hit the base of the restaurant behind the right-field seats, making the score 4-2. Perez once again brought Kansas City within a run in the eighth inning, hitting an RBI double, but the Royals were unable to plate the tying run, and the bullpen gave up three runs in the ninth to salt the game away.

It was 4-3, two outs, two on in the top of the ninth, when the always consistent CAL ELDRED came out to chat with Collin Snider. He did his “coaching” thing and whamo! The next five Astros reached base! It’s unbelievable how hard Cal Eldred sucks. I can’t believe he’s still here.

Out of 15 American League teams, the Royals are 15th in ERA, 14th in hits allowed, 14th in walks allowed, 15th in WHIP, and 15th in strikeouts. The solution, of course, is to keep letting Cal Eldred be the pitching coach. It’s working so well!

Players not named Salvador Perez managed 5 hits today for the Royals. Hunter Dozier was 0-for-4 with a classic big-spot Hunter Dozier strikeout. And before I get the usual “hey, Hunter Dozier isn’t the problem on this team! He’s doing ok this year!” round of comments, he is the only player in baseball to finish bottom-3-in-WAR multiple times in the last 10 years. In 50% of Hunter Dozier’s professional seasons, he has finished bottom-3-in-the-AL in WAR. He’s at 0.4 WAR this year. For him, that’s a Mike Trout season, I suppose.

Carlos Santana, who is still here for a reason that defies every reason known to man, went hitless to nobody’s surprise. I am convinced that Vinnie Pasquantino could bat with a blindfold on and still do better than the corpse of Carlos Santana at this point. Whit Merrifield has a negative WAR on the year but he must play every game because STREAKS! Andrew Benintendi left for an unknown reason in the ninth inning.

Here’s a funny Carlos Santana story. He caught a foul popout and Ryan and Rex were all “WOW, did you see the way he called for that ball? That is how you DO IT, kids!” That’s literally the only thing they can compliment about Carlos Santana at this point - his ability to say “I’ve got it!” when a foul ball is hit his way.

Alec Lewis said that the players look “spent” emotionally in a ninth-inning tweet. Seriously, screw them. They’re getting paid millions of dollars and they’re professional athletes. I could absolutely care less how “spent” they are with their coddled lifestyles. The fans that spend their hard-earned money on this atrocity of a product - and they’re about to be forced into paying for a new stadium for these mega-losers - they’re the ones that should feel “emotionally spent.”

There was a funny moment when the Astros tried to throw at Michael A. Taylor, as if that’ll be a real “gotcha” moment, and Ryan Pressley got ejected with two outs in a four-run, ninth-inning game. The umpire crew was as terrible as the Royals are! This rattled the Astros a bit, as the next four Royals reached - three walks and a hilarious Ryan O’Hearn pinch hit RBI single. Nicky Lopez, because the genius Mike Matheny yanked Sal Perez earlier in the day for a pinch hitter, came to the plate with the bases loaded and two down. The fans got excited! The noise was turned up! And then Nicky hit the ball about 40 feet and hit a dinky little groundout to end the game.

The Royals are 17-35. More tan twice as many wins as losses. If you had $1 for each win this team had, you would not have enough money to pay for a parking spot at Kauffman Stadium for a game. Considering the season is one-third of the way over, I’m going to go off on a limb and say that’s not great.

The only thing left to get excited about is how they will inevitably go 17-10 in September to narrowly avoid the worst record in club history, and Steve Physioc will say several times “just wait until next year folks! This momentum is going to CARRY OVER to next season!”

The Blue Jays and all of their big boppers come into town this week to face Cal Eldred’s pitching staff. I’m sure that’ll go great. Daniel Lynch is up first tomorrow at 7:10 pm.