Seth Lugo dominant as Royals win 6-2, take series against Cleveland

10 strikeouts in 6 innings. Masterful.

Seth Lugo, folks. Wow. The guy was just throwing absolute filth all over the strike zone. The Guardians couldn’t muster anything, and he finished with 10 strikeouts in only 6 innings (4 hits, 1 walk). Lugo was masterful, but he was not overpowering. Just totally unpredictable. I’m not sure there was one single barrelled ball all game against Lugo. If there was, it was non-threatening. All his junk was firing on all cylinders. Just a joy, a treat, a gift to watch him pitch today.

On offense, this was a game of inches. A few inches one way or the other could have changed everything. The Royals squeaked a bunch of hits in little gaps or just past fielders here and there. They were bunched together enough to score runs, this time.

The Royals opened the scoring early in the first inning. After a single to center put Bobby Witt Jr on first base, Pasquantino lobbed a lazy line drive single to right field. With runners at the corners and one out, Salvador Pérez hit a grounder into the deep part of the third/SS gap. Pasquantino was out fairly easily, but the Guardians had a little trouble turning the double play cleanly. In a bang-bang play at first, Pérez was initially called out. Quatraro signaled “earmuffs’’ for a review. Upon replay, Pérez was safe by about an inch and the play was overturned, so the Royals struck first 1-0.

The Royals kept it going in the second. Freddy Fermín squeaked a ground-ball double just a few inches fair down the third-base line. Garrett Hampson copied Freddy and slapped a hanging breaking ball down the third-base line to make it 2-0.

Hunter Renfroe very nearly made it 4-0 in the bottom of the third, but his fly ball to deep right-center field died a few inches before the wall and was caught for an out instead. The score remained 2-0.

The fifth inning saw some more nonsense leading to Royals runs. Blanco laid down a heck of a bunt and was pretty easily safe at first. Maikel Garcia followed with another bunt, and no one covered 2nd for a double play. Naylor was forced to tag out Garcia instead. That was enough for Vogt; he pulled Logan Allen instead of letting him face BWJ. Blanco stole third and nearly went home because Naylor’s throw was off-target…just not off-target enough. It didn’t matter; BWJ hit a line drive just over third base and turned it into a triple because, reminder, the dude is one of the fastest players in baseball. That scored Blanco to make it 3-0. Pasquantino followed with another pulled lazy line drive just past the first baseman on an infield-in alignment. 4-0 Royals.

Just an absolute parade of seeing-eye hits at the right time. Devil magic.

In the sixth, the devil magic just fell short. After back to back walks to Loftin and Fermín, Hampson showed bunt on the first pitch but pulled back for a ball. Hampson later did the same, showed bunt and pulled back, but this time hit a hard grounder to third. Jose Tena was in and tagged third for the force but airmailed a throw to first that not even Victor Wembanyama could have caught. Hampson and Fermín advanced to second and third, and thus the Royals accomplished a sac bunt by another name anyway. With the infield in, a soft grounder wasn’t good enough to score a run and Garcia flew out to end the inning without any runs scoring.

Will Smith pitched a scoreless seventh. Hooray! That is something to celebrate.

In the bottom of the seventh, the Royals finally mustered some offense that didn’t depend on the ball having eyes. Pasquantino lined an opposite-field single, which brought up Pérez. He lined a low pitch just over the fence in left field to make it 6-0 on his 14th home run of the season. After that, the Royals went back to just missing or just making hits. Renfroe doubled, and Nick Loftin lofted a lazy popup to center that had about 4 guys coming in to make the catch. Eventually the center fielder called everyone off and slid to catch the ball about two inches above the ground. Alas.

Cleveland finally broke through in the eighth inning against Sam Long with a Jose Ramírez grounder that was about half an inch too far from Loftin’s glove on the third base line. Schneemann scored as the ball lazily rolled into foul territory after grazing Loftin’s glove. Josh Naylor followed with a seeing-eye grounder up the middle to score Ramírez, making it 6-2. Long managed to avoid further damage by getting Jhonkensy Noel to strike out on a pitch that bounced before the plate. However, Long managed to strike out guys for all three outs in the inning. Maybe there’s something here with Long, long-term.

The Royals scattered 11 hits across 8 innings for the win. James McArthur locked down the 9th for a 6-2 win.

Fun Notes

1. Josh Naylor looked like he had a piece of uncooked hamburger on his helmet while batting in the first inning. It was not warm enough to cook the burger.
2. Early in the game, Seth Lugo took a line drive off his glove-side arm, or his glove, I couldn’t quite tell, and put Allen Iverson sleeves on both arms to pitch the rest of the game.
3. My three-year-old fell asleep on my shoulder while watching the game. We had a hard morning of complaining about everything and mowing the backyard.
4. Stephen Vogt is three years older than I am but has the same amount of gray hair in his beard as I do. I have considerably less MLB experience though.
5. There were a lot of guys staring into the sun to make catches on popups. Maybe wear sunglasses? I think I saw more sunglasses in the dugout than on the field. Kyle Isbel’s sunglasses looked particularly stylish.
6. My six-year-old thinks I look like Hunter Renfroe.
7. There was a strange, awkward, truncated Jungle Law in-broadcast commercial during the fourth inning. Like the commercial didn’t fully finish before they cut it off. There were talking monkeys and a car wreck and I think the Jungle Law guy was riding a horse or some other animal. I live in KC so I know their wacky advertising, but this one just stood out to me.
8. QT arm patch > Marathon arm patch
9. Daniel Schneemann played CF, SS, and 3B. I had never heard of Schneemann before today.

The Royals take the series 3-1 against the Guardians and make up ground in the division race. The record is 47-39.

What’s Next: The Royals have an off day on Monday, July 1st. They resume their homestand against the Tampa Bay Rays on Tuesday, July 2nd at 7:10pm central time.