What we learned after the Kansas City Royals lost in extra innings

The winning streak has ended, as the Kansas City Royals lost to the Reds on Tuesday night.

Well, the winning streak was fun while it lasted and even though two of the four wins came over while I was on vacation this weekend, it was still good to see the Kansas City Royals turn things around.

Even in this game – a 6-5 loss in ten innings to the Cincinnati Reds – the Royals fought back after being down 5-1 and forced things into extra innings. The Royals at the beginning of the season would not have done that.

The Kansas City Royals might have lost in extra innings, but they gave it their all.

The Royals had 11 hits on the evening and left the bases loaded three times. If just one thing goes differently when they have the bases loaded, the winning streak is probably up to five games right now.

Ryan McBroom gets the most applause from Royals fans after this one, as he was the one who hit a two-run bomb to left field to tie the game at five runs a piece. McBroom really has been clutch this season and it was nice to see Mike Matheny pinch hit for Alex Gordon in that spot considering how badly Gordon has been struggling. It panned out obviously.

Ryan O’Hearn and Adalberto Mondesi knocked in the other runs with McBroom, Jorge Soler, Salvador Perez, Maikel Franco, and Nicky Lopez crossing the plate.

Were it not for a rough outing by Bubic, this game looks much different.

Kris Bubic made his third Major League start and despite this being his worst start so far, he didn’t get the loss due to McBroom’s home run in the fifth inning. Bubic went five innings, but was roughed up pretty badly in the third inning where he gave up two home runs (one was a two-run homer and the other was a solo bomb), making it 5-1 Reds.

Bubic allowed seven hits, five runs, walked one batter, and struck out six through five innings of work. He now has an ERA of 5.40, which isn’t great, but what I liked about Bubic in this outing was that he was able to come back into the game and pitch clean fourth and fifth innings after getting lit up. He saved the bullpen a few taxing innings, which was big considering this one went into extra innings.

Tyler Zuber, Ian Kennedy, Scott Barlow, and Trevor Rosenthal pitched four scoreless innings and poor Josh Staumont had to be the one to work around the stupid runner on second with nobody out rule that’s been implemented this season. Staumont got the loss after allowing the winning run, but he’s still sitting pretty with a 1.17 ERA.

The winning streak had to end sometime for the Kansas City Royals.

After four impressive wins, the Royals find themselves back in the losing column, but they’re only four games under .500 and this team is a far different squad from the one we were watching just a week ago.

The Royals fell behind by four runs early on, but they bounced back and their bullpen kept them in this one. This team is starting to take shape and it’s been a lot of fun to watch.

Next up is game two of the series with the Reds.

Eighteen games down, 42 to go!