Royals Win Thrilling Game In Extra Innings

The Royals started things off quickly this evening in the bottom of the first when Ben Zobrist followed up a leadoff single from Alcides Escobar with a double over the head of ex-Royal David Dejesus in left field to give the Royals an early 1-0 lead. Lorenzo Cain pushed Zobrist to third with a groundout before Eric Hosmer hit a ground ball between the shortstop and third basemen to plate another and make the score 2-0.

Yordano Ventura pitched five scoreless innings until he finally hit a bit of trouble in the sixth. Kole Calhoun led off the inning with a triple and scored on a wild pitch. David Murphy was later able to stick out his bat and poke an opposite-field solo home run out into right field to tie the game at two.

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After that first inning, Angels starting pitcher Hector Santiago pitched six scoreless innings as the Royals struggled to get anything going whatsoever. In fact, they didn’t get a hit against the Angels in any inning except the first and tenth.

The Angels took the lead in the eighth inning when Wade Davis hung a pitch and Kole Calhoun hit a solo home run out to right field to make the score 3-2.

The Royal were able to tie it up in the bottom of the ninth. Eric Hosmer led off with a walk and moved to second on a Kendrys Morales groundout. Huston Street then intentionally walked Mike Moustakas before unintentionally walking light-hitting Drew Butera who was playing catcher for Salvador Perez who had been ejected from the game in an earlier inning after arguing balls and strikes with the home plate umpire. Alex Rios hit a sacrifice fly to right to score Hosmer. Then the Royals almost walked off when Paulo Orlando came to the plate and hit a shot towards right-center field but Mike Trout made a really athletic catch to send the game to extras.

In the bottom of the tenth inning, Ben Zobrist hit a one-out single. After Lorenzo Cain flew out, Eric Hosmer drew a walk which set the stage for one Kendrys Morales.

And he delivered.

Morales singled to left field to score the winning run and was mobbed by his teammates which immediately terrified me as Morales has had terrible luck with that in the past, but he emerged unscathed and the Royals had their 71st win of the season after a nationally televised extra-innings nail-biter.