Royals pitchers hold back Tigers and KC captures four-game series sweep in Detroit
The collective groan from the home crowd wasn’t only audible, it could practically be felt up in the press box at Comerica Park.
That was after Kansas City Royals reliever Greg Holland recorded his third consecutive out to strand the tying run 90 feet from home and send the game to the ninth with his club clinging to a one-run lead.
Royals pitchers seemed to find ways out of tight spots all day Monday, as if they’d all taken lessons from Harry Houdini on logic-defying escapes, in a 3-2 win over the Detroit Tigers in front of an announced 7,288 spectators.
The win sealed a four-game sweep as the Royals (14-7) pushed their winning streak to five games. They’ve now won 10 of 13 games, including the first four of their nine-game road trip.
“Winning four games in a major-league season in one series is so hard to do,” Royals manager Mike Matheny said. “We had our backs against the wall a couple times, and I’m just really impressed with how these guys went about it.”
The sweep marked the Royals’ first four-game road sweep since May 7-10, 1999, in Minnesota at the Metrodome. The series sweep also marked just the second in franchise history for the Royals in Detroit, the other coming on Aug. 3-5, 1984 at Tiger Stadium.
The Tigers stranded 11 men on base, while the Royals improved to 6-0 in one-run games.
The Royals have also won 58 consecutive games when leading after the seventh inning, the longest active streak in MLB according to the Elias Sports Bureau.
First baseman Carlos Santana hit his fifth home run of the season, a two-run blast in the third inning to give the Royals their first runs of the game. Jarrod Dyson doubled and scored on a Whit Merrifield sacrifice fly in the fifth inning after the Tigers had tied the score.
Nicky Lopez tripled, scored a run and executed a sacrifice bunt to help set up Dyson’s run.
Royals catcher Salvador Perez, who played in his 1,000th career game on Monday, left the game in the bottom of the seventh inning because of thumb discomfort, and the injury is considered day-to-day, according to the team.
Royals starting pitcher Brad Keller flirted with trouble throughout the game, but recorded his first quality start of the season.
Keller needed 92 pitches to get through five innings. Until the sixth, he didn’t have an inning without a man on base, and multiple Tigers reached in four of the first five innings.
Keller (2-2) went six innings — his longest outing this season — and held the Tigers to two runs off eight hits and two walks. He struck out four and handed the game over to the bullpen with a one-run lead.
“I think that’s just a character win for our club,” Matheny said. “Brad was not feeling it at the beginning. You could tell, even with his fastball. He was having trouble hitting the zone, working behind in counts. What he did was he figured out a way to grind through it. … I don’t know if many people would have been guessing that Brad would be able to get through six after watching him there in the first.”
It certainly looked like Keller might not have made it through the fifth inning, but Akil Baddoo swung at a 3-0 pitch with two on and two out for an inning-ending fly ball to center field. The Royals had right-hander Tyler Zuber warming up in the bullpen.
However, Keller came back out for the sixth and recorded his first 1-2-3 inning of the day via a strikeout, grounder and fly ball.
“You’ve just got to keep grinding, keep going,” Keller said. “I don’t think you can fold it up and pack it in. You just got to keep going. Like Mike said, our bullpen needed some rest and I needed to get deep into this ballgame. Our starters balled out this series, and I really wanted to pick them up, pick up our whole team on this last game, pick up our bullpen.”
Keller said his early struggles were a product of doing “too much,” trying to throw “really nasty” breaking balls — one he spiked so short that it hopped up and over Perez — and his pitching mechanics breaking down.
Relief pitchers Scott Barlow, Josh Staumont and Holland gave the Tigers glimmers of hope late in the game but stranded would-be tying or go-ahead runs on base.
Barlow walked the first two batters in the seventh before he struck out three in a row.
Holland gave up the triple to start the eighth on a ball hit to left-center field by Baddoo that came mere inches away from landing as a game-tying solo home run. Holland got a strikeout, a weak dribbler in front of the plate and another strikeout to end that threat.
Staumont walked one batter in the ninth on his way to his second save in the last three games.
“It’s obviously not what you typically want to happen, but I think it’s just one of those things where you know the adjustment you need to make,” Barlow said. “Then it’s just a matter of executing it.”
This story was originally published April 26, 2021 at 3:17 PM with the headline "Royals pitchers hold back Tigers and KC captures four-game series sweep in Detroit."
