Kansas City Royals: Duffy’s start encouraging in walkoff loss

For the second consecutive game, the Kansas City Royals bats were silent as they were shut down by former teammate Homer Bailey.

If there was ever a time that Homer Bailey resembled Christian Bale’s Batman from a physical and superpowers perspective, it was against his former employer in the Kansas City Royals on Wednesday. Sometimes you just have to tip your cap to the other guy as Bailey looked unhittable in the series finale.

He had the split finger fastball working for him as he mowed down a season-high 11 batters in 7.0 innings of work. That’s not to say that Danny Duffy was terrible. In fact, minus the strikeouts, he matched Bailey’s start going 7.0 innings of his own with 6 punchouts.

Jorge Soler was able to collect his 30th double of the season in the top half of the 7th inning, just two pitches after he narrowly missed his American League-leading 46th home run that curved just wide of the left-field foul pole. However, the Royals were unable to do anything with that as Hunter Dozier struck out and Ryan O’Hearn had an RBI single taken away from him on an excellent Chad Pinder diving play.

The bullpen certainly did their job with Scott Barlow striking out 3 batters in 1.2 innings and Tim Hill continued his dominant September, needing just one pitch to record the final out of the 9th inning to send it to extras. The Royals were able to get a leadoff single from Bubba Starling in the top half of the 11th inning but again, they failed to do anything with it as Soler’s bases-loaded strikeout proved to be fatal.

With Jesse Hahn pitching, the Athletics led off the bottom half of the 11th inning with a Jurickson Profar walk, followed by striking out both Marcus Semien and Matt Chapman. However, Hahn intentionally walked Matt Olson to get to Mark Canha who lined a double down the right-field line to give the Royals their second straight series loss after winning the previous four to start the month.

Duffy has been very good since he returned from the injured list with a 1.78 ERA in 4 starts while allowing a combined 4 earned runs in 25.1 innings. He’s making every case to remain in the rotation next season with a fantastic month of September.

Now the Royals will make their final pit stop away from Kauffman Stadium for a four-game series against the AL Central-leading Minnesota Twins.