Royals Lose, By A Lot, Again

The career resurgence and rebuilding of Jason Hammel continued Friday night as he battled his way out of trouble time and again, and Royals hitters could never capitalize with runners on base. (Which shouldn’t be all that surprising.) And the Royals lost 8-2.

With the loss the Royals fall to 17-27 on the year, and in the hashtag and catchy slogan season, 10 games below .500 is magnified when the other teams in the division aren’t all that good either. Plus, what the heck happened to supposed to be star players on the Royals roster?

Oh well, that’s a discussion for another time. What went down tonight wasn’t shocking after a first inning debacle of a call and not one, but two, potential defensive outs were lost on botched pickoff attempts. If ever there was a definition of #royaling, that was it. Well those two plays, and Jeff Francoeur being thrown out at home with the infield pulled in.

Not a whole lot else noteworthy happened. This was the type of game you fall asleep in the second inning, wake up in the eighth inning, and you haven’t missed a thing. That is of course, unless you’re interested in watching a team that finished worse than the Royals last year (and the year before), and so far this season looks light-years ahead of Kansas City in terms of both talent and on-field philosophy.

After a 12-win, 6-loss run that started to breathe some life and hope into the fanbase, the Royals have answered by losing 6 of 9 games and haven’t looked pretty doing so.

A positive? Felipe Paulino starts Saturday. And hopefully, just hopefully, Alex Gordon has a huge game.