Nine Runs Not Enough For the Indians, Fall to the Kansas City Royals, Three Takeaways from 10-9 Loss

CLEVELAND, Ohio- On Friday night, the Cleveland Indians took on the Kansas City Royals in what was game one of a three-game series concluding on Sunday afternoon.

Coming into tonight’s game against the Royals, the Indians won their previous game and split a two-game series in Milwaukee with the Brewers.

Heading into Friday night’s matchup the Indians came in with a record of 18-18 and currently have a 1.5 game lead over the Twins for first in the Central. The Royals came in with a record of 12-25.

Following the Indians loss to the Royals, the Indians fell to 18-19 on the season. As the Royals improved to 13-25 on the year.

Here’s our three takeaways from the Indians 10-9 loss.

1.) Trevor Bauer Has Shortest Outing of the Season

Indians starting pitcher Trevor Bauer was not a factor in the decision of Friday night's game. In Bauer's second start against the Royals this season he experienced his shortest outing of the 2018 campaign.

Bauer only pitched 4.2 innings, gave up 11 hits, gave up 5 runs (4 earned), walked 2, and struck out 3 batters.

Bauer now has a 2-4 record against the Kansas City Royals along with an ERA of 3.39.

Following the game, Bauer spoke about how frustrating it is as a team experienced miscues and things not going the way they'd like.

#Indians Trevor Bauer comments on if its frustrating in their recent stretch of games similar to tonight. pic.twitter.com/iAQeeDHhn8
— Payton Vince (@PaytonVince) May 12, 2018

2.) Offensive Explosion

To start the year off, fans were begging the team to score some runs. Cleveland put up 9 runs in tonight's ballgame with the Royals but 9 wasn't enough to come away victorious.

The Indians recorded their 10th loss after holding a lead and blew their largest lead in a loss since August 1, 2017, against the Red Sox.

Cleveland also had their first home loss in a game with three or more home runs since May 29th, 2016 against the Orioles.

The Indians do have control over the AL Central though, since July 1, 2017, the team has maintained a record of 38-11 against divisional foes.

3.) All Hail The Long Ball

With two first-inning homers from Jose Ramirez and Yonder Alonso the Indians have four players (including Francisco Lindor with 10 and Edwin Encarnacion with 9) with at least nine homers. This is the first time since 1995 that Cleveland has had four players with nine-plus homers through 37 games when Paul Sorrento (12), Manny Ramirez (12), Jim Thome (10), and Eddie Murray (9) achieved that.

In the six-run fourth inning, the Indians batted around and now have batted around in an inning in each of the teams' last three home games. The team managed to do so in both games of their doubleheader against Toronto on May 3.

Adding to the offense was Michael Brantley when he hit his second career grand slam to finish off the Indians 6 run 4th inning. Brantley is now the 3rd batter to have multiple grand slams this season, in company with Boston's Xander Bogaerts and Houston's Josh Reddick.

Brantley is the first Indians batter to hit two grand slams in a season since Travis Hafner did so in 2010, he is also the first batter with two grand slams in a month since Hafner did so in July of 2006.

The Cleveland Indians will be looking to bounce back from Friday night's defeat on Saturday and will be sending Mike Clevinger to the hill. Clevinger will be opposed by Jakob Junis of the Royals, first pitch is expected to be at 4:10 pm EST.