Kansas City Royals pitchers hammered for four home runs in loss to the Diamondbacks
Kansas City Royals rookies knocked in five of the team’s six runs, but it wasn’t enough on an Arizona night when the ball kept flying and no lead seemed to provide ample comfort.
There was plenty of reason not to trust any advantage as the lead changed hands three times in the first six innings. The last swing of the pendulum, a five-run sixth inning for the Arizona Diamondbacks, sealed the Royals’ fate on Tuesday night.
The Royals’ losing slide extended to six games with an 8-6 loss to the Diamondbacks in the second game of their two-game interleague set in front of an announced 12,616 at Chase Field. The Diamondbacks swept the two-game series.
Royals relief pitcher Taylor Clarke gave up three runs and the lead in the pivotal sixth inning for the Royals, including a pair of home runs.
The loss wrapped up a stretch of 19 games in 17 days for the Royals. They went 6-13 during that stretch with 11 of those games (seven losses) on the road.
“That’s another tough one,” Royals manager Mike Matheny said. “You get an opportunity to get back into it, then you get a three-run lead and you get into those middle-late innings, and those are ones we believe we should put away. But unfortunately it kind of snowballed there in the sixth and turned into a big inning.
“It’s a shame. (Starting pitcher Jonathan) Heasley did a good job despite the walks and the inefficiency. He was still limiting the damage to where it was just going to be one an inning, but still more walks than what we need.”
Royals rookie catcher MJ Melendez went 2 for 4 with a home run, a double, two runs scored and three RBIs. Dairon Blanco went 1 for 3 with two RBIs, and fellow rookie Bobby Witt Jr. went 1 for 4 with an RBI.
Whit Merrifield (2 for 4) had two hits, a walk and a run scored. Andrew Benintendi (1 for 4) hit a double.
Royals rookie Heasley allowed three runs in five innings on four hits and a career-high six walks. Heasley threw more than half of his 81 pitches outside the strike zone (42 balls). He gave up two home runs to the club that entered the night leading the NL since May 1, with 32 homers in 22 games.
Yet Heasley also struck out five, and he handed the ball over to the bullpen with a three-run lead thanks to the Royals (14-28) having scored three in the top of the sixth.
“That one was a grind tonight, kind of a lot going on, a lot of traffic, once again,” said Heasley, who has walked 13 batters in three starts this season. “I felt like I did a really good job of staying in it, fighting, I feel like I’m gassed. I felt like I was in a dogfight tonight. It was a battle, but I felt like I grinded it out well, made pitches when I had to necessarily and was able to limit the damage as much as I could.”
Heasley gave up the first leadoff home run in the career of Diamondbacks catcher Daulton Varsho when his 1-0 fastball caught too much of the middle of the plate and ended up 444 feet away, beyond the center-field wall.
That deficit didn’t last long as Heasley’s battery mate Melendez took care of that in his first at-bat in the top half of the second inning. Melendez launched his third home run in the majors, a towering blast to right field with Hunter Dozier on base, for a two-run home run.
Walks put Heasley in a precarious position in the second inning. Heasely gave up a run without allowing a hit or an error committed behind him. Instead he issued three walks and a bases-loaded wild pitch that allowed a runner to score from third to tie the game. Heasley also struck out three batters in the inning.
“It’s just tough,” Heasley said of the second inning. “It’s frustrating because you struck three guys out, but you also walked three guys and you’re throwing a ton of extra pitches. So you know it’s just kind of one of those things where you take the positives into the next one. But it’s frustrating, especially kind of having it a couple times in a row.”
The Royals kept the seesaw feel going in the third inning thanks to back-to-back one-out hits by Merrifield and Andrew Benintendi. Merrifield then scored on Witt’s grounder to shortstop that gave the Royals a 3-2 edge.
Arizona’s David Peralta’s leadoff homer in the fourth put the teeter totter back in balance with the score 3-3. Heasley hadn’t given up a homer in either of his first two starts in the majors this season, but he gave up two in the first four innings.
The tie stood until the Royals pieced together a three-run sixth inning with an RBI double by Melendez and a two-run single by Blanco, who was a late substitution into the starting lineup because Kyle Isbel had what the club termed mild illness symptoms.
Royals left-handed reliever Amir Garrett gave up a one-out single and a walk in the sixth. Then Clarke took over and gave up a two-out, three-run pinch-hit homer to Jordan Luplow that tied the score 6-6.
Then in a span of eight pitches, Clarke gave up a double to Varsho and a two-run homer to Pavin Smith as the Diamondbacks (23-22) grabbed an 8-6 lead.
“He had a good idea what he wanted to do,” Matheny said of Clarke. “Having a plan and executing it are two different things, especially when you get into the pressure of a situation. They brought in a pinch hitter and they got the job done in a big situation when we needed that out.”
Clarke has now given up seven earned runs in his past two appearances.
The Royals have Wednesday off, and they’ll begin a four-game series with the Minnesota Twins on Thursday in Minneapolis. The scheduled pitching matchup for Thursday features Royals left-hander Daniel Lynch (2-3, 4.01 ERA) against Twins right-hander Joe Ryan (5-2, 2.28).
This story was originally published May 24, 2022 at 11:59 PM with the headline "Kansas City Royals pitchers hammered for four home runs in loss to the Diamondbacks."
