Kansas City Royals swept by Cleveland Guardians after shutout loss in finale
Staying the course isn’t the easiest thing to do or sell when you’re Kansas City Royals pitcher Brad Keller, staring at a 1-6 record and opposing hitters turning cheap little seeing-eye singles and 98-foot flares and 200-foot bloops into margins of victory.
Keller came out on the short end as the Royals were shut out for the sixth time this season in a 4-0 loss to the Cleveland Guardians in the finale of a three-game series Wednesday at Progressive Field.
The Royals’ losing slide extended to four consecutive games as they head into a day off on Thursday. The Royals (16-33) finished their three-city road trip, which included a two-game interleague set in Arizona, 2-7.
Keller (1-6) allowed four runs, six hits and three walks. He registered one strikeout. He went six innings or more for the seventh time in 10 starts this season. However, his last win came on May 3, against the St. Louis Cardinals.
“A grinding outing for sure,” Keller said of his day. “I felt like I had pretty good stuff. I felt like I got ahead for the most part. Three walks is obviously not ideal. I just kind of got beat by some unfortunate hits, hits that found holes, balls just over our infield. I just tried to keep the team in it as best I could and keep grinding out innings.”
Keller, who has a 4.15 ERA, gave up one run apiece in four innings. He gave up a run in the third on a two-out RBI single by Amed Rosario. Keller gave up two singles and a walk in that inning.
The Guardians added runs in the fourth, fifth and sixth innings.
In the fourth, Andres Gimenez’s RBI single scored Owen Miller from second. A bobble by shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. on a slow roller on the infield prevented the Royals from cutting down Miller, the lead runner, one batter prior.
In the fifth, a leadoff walk came back to get Keller after a single, a fly out that advanced the lead runner to third base and an RBI groundout to Royals first baseman Carlos Santana, a longtime member of the club in Cleveland.
Again in the sixth, the Guardians struck with two outs when Gimenez and Richie Palacios hit back-to-back doubles. Palacios’ double came on a well-placed bloop that fell before left fielder Andrew Benintendi and Witt could converge on it. With two outs, Gimenez was running on contact and scored easily.
Keller remained steadfast that he needs to continue with the approach that he took into that outing, pitch to contact, trust his defense and not try to over-pitch.
“I think that’s the hard part, you feel like you make the pitch and you don’t get rewarded for it,” Keller said. “But you’ve just got to kind of turn the page. You’ve got to go to the next guy, recognize that that AB is over and you can’t do anything about it. You’ve just got to go get the next guy.”
He pointed out that he stranded runners on base in each of those innings, meaning any one of those frames could have “spiraled out of control.”
At times last season, Keller certainly fell victim to one big inning. He’s avoided that for the most part this season and it has resulted in him going deeper into games and leading the club in innings pitched — even before he made his 10th start on Wednesday to tie Zack Greinke for the team lead in that category.
Strikeouts not the answer, Matheny says
“He had good enough stuff to win,” Royals manager Mike Matheny said of Keller. “It’s just freakish what leadoff walks do to us. Two of the three walks he had ended up scoring. It’s been something pretty consistent. But he had everything he needed today to give us a chance to win.
“Obviously, we’ve got to have some offense. We had chances and weren’t able to come through. You strike out that many times, it’s going to be a long day.”
When asked if the tough breaks for Keller were part of what comes from working within the margins of pitching to contact — not being a strikeout pitcher, relying on weak contact and seeking ground balls — Matheny stood firm in his response.
“One of those runs, we had a double play ball. We weren’t able to turn it for him,” Matheny said. “If he starts thinking about strikeouts, I’m telling you, he’s going to have himself trouble. With soft contact, we’ll take our chances.
“We put up some runs there, that’s a different game. He needs to continue to use what he’s got. Chasing strikeouts is going to run him out of the game really early and it’s going to put him in bad counts.”
Matheny warned that chasing a swing-and-miss is a recipe for a pitcher like Keller to get into bad counts, which then forces him to have to bring his pitches to the middle of plate, and that leads to a higher frequency of hard-hit balls.
“You’re going to have some bloops,” Matheny said. “You’re going to have some bleeders. You’ll get some ground balls that get through. You stay the course with that approach and it pays off in the long run.”
Offense slows down, aside from Benintendi
Royals left fielder Andrew Benintendi collected three of the team’s seven hits on a day when he went 3 for 4. Santana (2 for 4) also had two hits.
Benintendi extended his AL-leading on-base streak to 23 games. He also has a five-game hitting streak. Through 49 games this season, he has batted .337 with a .402 on-base percentage.
They were 1 for 6 with runners in scoring position, and they left nine men on base. They stranded the bases loaded in the fourth inning after loading them with one out.
The Royals were held to three total runs in the last two games of the series against the Guardians. But in the seven games on the road trip leading up to Monday, the Royals batted .268 with 24 extra-base hits and a .763 OPS.
“You’re not going to be able to put up that many all the time,” Matheny said. “It has been a good positive run. It has happened recently enough, everybody still feels good about themselves on the offensive side, or at least most of them. They realize that we’ve got the ability to do some damage.
“Right there, we’ve got the bases loaded. It’s right there in our hands that we can make something happen. You’re going to run into days where guys are executing the pitches. The strikeouts are pretty indicative that they were making the pitches they wanted to in the counts they needed to.”
Cleanup hitter and All-Star catcher Salvador Perez has gone 2 for 26 with 10 strikeouts in his last seven games. Perez, last season’s AL co-leader in home runs and leader in RBIs, is batting .187.
He walked on four pitches in his first at-bat of the day, his first walk since May 11.
“I feel like I’ve got to do better to help my team win,” Perez said. “I need some (hits) with guys in scoring position. I come in to hit there’s guys on first and second — I don’t want to say almost every time, but most of the time — so I need to start to produce for the team, help my team to win.
Perez espoused the need to flip the page and forget about what’s already happened and can’t be changed. That has been a common refrain of his during lean times.
“Hopefully, it’s only a month and a half (into the season),” Perez said. “I believe in my team. I believe that we’re going to get better. I believe that we can compete. It’s just a tough situation right now. We’re going to get out of this and start to play good ... We’ve done it before, so we can do it again.”
This story was originally published June 1, 2022 at 3:08 PM with the headline "Kansas City Royals swept by Cleveland Guardians after shutout loss in finale."
