Three Takeaways From the Royals' 10-3 Loss to the Tigers
The Kansas City Royals are once again in a bad skid with their fourth consecutive loss, as they lose 10-3 to the Detroit Tigers tonight.
Brad Keller had another rough game, as Baseball Savant credited him with seven hard hit balls in just five innings pitched, and it showed on the box score with him allowing six earned runs in those five innings.
Kansas City drops to a 30-35 record on the season, while Detroit improves to 27-39. Here are three things I took away from today's game.
This team is shockingly bad at driving in runners.
The Royals did a quite solid job at hitting the baseball today, with Baseball Savant giving them a .292 expected batting average (xBA) compared to the Tigers' .257 and 10 balls hit over 95 mph, but they failed to make a real impact bringing runners in, as they scored three runs, left 13 runners on base, went 1-for-14 with runners in scoring position, left multiple runners on base four times and left the bases loaded twice. This is a pretty clear main culprit for why the Royals lost tonight, even more than Brad Keller's poor night.
The Royals are going to badly miss Andrew Benintendi.
In case you missed it, Andrew Benintendi was sent to the 10-day injured list with a right rib fracture earlier today, putting Jorge Soler up to the cleanup spot and making Edward Olivares the starting left fielder. Considering the poor season Soler has had, the great season Benintendi has had and the uncertainty with Olivares, this is likely going to have a great negative impact for the coming games. Tonight, Soler did great, hitting all of the Royals' three hardest hit balls tonight (113.3 mph single, 107.7 mph double and 104.5 mph single), so that was a relief, but Olivares unfortunately couldn't help fill the Benintendi hole, going 1-for-5 with just one ball hit greater than 90 mph.
It's nearing "wave the white flag" territory on this season.
I hate to say it, because I have been as optimistic as just about anyone on this team since before the season even started, but this team is getting into a hole that is going to be very hard to get out of. After this, the Royals are 10.5 games back in the American League Central race and seven games back in the AL Wild Card race and we are now 40% through the season. It is going to take some major heroics in the coming weeks and months to get October baseball.
