Kansas City Royals: What we learned after another dominant Brad Keller start
The Kansas City Royals won 4-0 in their first game of Wednesday’s doubleheader. Brad Keller was awesome in this one.
Brad Keller has yet to allow a run in his three starts so far this season and he was locked in during the Kansas City Royals‘ first game on Wednesday. He came so close to pitching all seven innings, but allowed two baserunners in the seventh inning, so in came Trevor Rosenthal to close things out, which he did quickly.
Even though he couldn’t get the final out of the game, Keller was still insanely good in game one of the doubleheader, allowing just three hits, walking three, and striking out five. Keller has still yet to allow a run so far this season and is looking as good as ever.
The Royals were able to jump off to a 3-0 lead in the first inning thanks to an error by the Reds defense that allowed Whit Merrifield to reach. That, in turn, led to a run when Jorge Soler doubled to left. Ryan O’Hearn then singled to center, which scored Hunter Dozier and Soler.
The Royals offense struck again in the fourth inning, as Merrifield singled to left field, which got Adalberto Mondesi to home plate and put the Royals up 4-0.
That would be the final score for the Royals’ first game of the doubleheader and an important takeaway here is that Keller went 6.2 innings in a seven inning game, giving the Royals all of their bullpen to use for the second game (even Rosenthal should be available considering it took him four pitches to close things out.
This was the first time the Kansas City Royals shut out an opponent.
Game two is going to be interesting, as Matt Harvey will take the mound for the Royals for the first time. Harvey had a rough 2019 season with the Angels and hasn’t been very good since the 2015 season where he and the Mets faced the Royals in the World Series.
Hopefully Harvey does well, but if he doesn’t, the Royals have Kyle Zimmer available in the bullpen to go three or four innings if necessary. Like I mentioned before, they have their entire bullpen available for game two due to Keller going nearly the entire game.
Twenty-four games down, 46 to go!