Recap: Houston 8, Kansas City 2 – There’s Always Tomorrow

The game did not start in a favorable fashion for the Royals as Chris Young gave up a loud three runs in the bottom of the first, courtesy of the good Jose Alltuve, the good and soon to be great Carlos Correa and the good against the Royals Colby Rasmus.  While we like to grumble about the uniquely dimensioned Minute Maid Park, those are three runs pretty much anywhere in baseball.

Later in the fourth inning, one might have a logical complaint with regard to the viability of the runs scored by Houston, but suffice it to say the outfielders Reymond Fuentes and Lorenzo Cain both experiences the unpredictable wall angles on the park.  That said, Young walked Preston Tucker and allowed Luis Valbuena and Jason Castro – not exactly a trio of batting prowess – to double and triple (yes, another catcher who tripled in a Royals’ game).  Ballpark effect?  Maybe a little, but let’s not kid ourselves into thinking the Astros were not smacking the ball.

In between the above two innings, the Royals put some runners on, but did little.  Salvador Perez popped out with Alex Gordon on first and two innings later popped out with Gordon on second and Eric Hosmer on third.  It would be remiss to hang Salvy out to dry for his fourth inning at-bat without mentioning a Kendrys Morales at-bat in the same inning that saw the big man watch two meaty strikes and generally have a horrible plate appearance.

All that left the Royals down 6-0 after four innings and it got worse after Mike Moustakas grounded into a 3-6-1 double play to end a scoring threat in the top of the fifth.  That left us with Ryan and Rex commiserating about bat flips, the old days of policing the game and generally lamenting any non-Royal based emotion shown on a baseball diamond ‘these days’. All we needed at this point was to have a talking head who knows nothing about sabermetrics or what they are based upon telling us how wrong sabermetrics are these days.

Pretty much looks like I picked the wrong night to start doing game recaps.

All told, 70% of Chris Young’s 101 pitches were strikes, but his last inning was a microcosm of the tall man’s night.  A three pitch strikeout of Colby Rasmus started the fifth, but a 10 pitch walk to Preston Tucker…PRESTON TUCKER for godssake..ended his duties in that inning. Generally, just dismal. Momma said there’d be nights like this.

How dismal?  Maddeningly dismal enough to make Alex Gordon bark at an umpire.

The Royals had stranded nine baserunners prior to Kendrys Morales, disparaged earlier in this column, blasted – yes, blasted, a home run to left-center to score the Royals’ first two runs and cut the deficit to five.  By then, however, Ned Yost had gone to Drew Butera behind the plate and Paulo Orlando in center, so the feeling that Kansas City was going to mount an epic comeback in Houston was not exactly in the offing. That Mike Moustakas ended the game by grounding into his second double play seems just about right.

Listen, you folks know how this game works. The Royals didn’t move runners and scored but a handful.  They made a couple of nice defensive plays, but saw more than few balls be just a bit out of reach.  That does not mean the Royals are not embarking on another great season.  Even if they are, however, there will still be another sixty-some losses yet to come and 15 or 20 of those are going to feel like this one did tonight.