Three Royals Soar for a 4-0 win over Orioles

Record: 18-16 (W1)

W: Kris Bubic (3-2 1.98 ERA)
L: Tomoyuki Sugano (3-2, 3.00 ERA)

Shortly after the nationally-televised game began, a thunderstorm began rolling in, prompting a one-hour rain delay.

Even after the game resumed, it was still quiet. Kris Bubic threw five shutout innings, allowing just one walk and four hits while striking out three. Overall, everything seemed great with him; he stayed in the zone and generated 29% called strikes and whiffs, but was peculiarly not sent back out for the sixth inning, despite only throwing 72 pitches. There weren’t any immediate comments from the team, which probably means nothing is wrong. Perhaps the Royals wanted to get more regular playing time from their relief corps and intended on using Bubic for just five innings to begin with.

The Orioles had the righty Tomoyuki Sugano take the mound, who by comparison missed quite a lot down and away.

For a moment, it seemed like the Royals couldn’t do much more than take an occasional walk or get a hard-hit out, the usual. Fortunately, they were able to get a small breakthrough in the 3rd inning with Jonathan India splitting the gap for a ground-rule double in the lead-off spot. With two outs, Maikel Garcia was able to chase a curveball with a relaxed, well-controlled swing and put it in the outfield with a nice, short arc.

The following inning, Cavan Biggio would shock the house with his first extra base hit of the year – a solo home run that just barely found its way out.

A much more exciting offensive surge would come in the 8th inning. Seranthony Domínguez was ineffective with his upper-90’s fastball as the Royals were able to crush a few of them–two of them for two more home runs, one from Kyle Isbel and another from Vinnie Pasquantino. After hitting just 10 home runs in the entire month of April, the Royals have hit six this week.

With Bubic only going five innings, Daniel Lynch IV was given control of two innings to himself, and as usual he made good on the opportunity. Lynch was nearly perfect, tossing two scoreless innings and only allowing two baserunners on a Gunnar Henderson single and a Ramón Laureano walk in separate innings. Lucas Erceg and John Schreiber (whose ERA is now below 2) finished the game with two more scoreless innings just before rain started to take over again.

The Royals and Orioles will finish the 3-game series tomorrow, Sunday May 3 at 12:35 PM. Michael Lorenzen is set to pitch for Kansas City while Kyle Gibson is the scheduled starter for Baltimore.

Image credit: Jay Biggerstaff-USA TODAY Sports