Kansas City Royals: What we learned after Jorge Soler drove in all three runs
The Kansas City Royals traveled to the other side of the state and got their butts handed to them by the Cardinals.
Hey, at least Jorge Soler was good, right? He drove in all three runs for the Kansas City Royals and continues to be one of the best players on this team.
Soler hit a three-run bomb in the sixth inning, which was all the Royals were able to muster up against their in-state rival, as they fell 9-3 and dropped to 11-18 on the shortened season (funny enough, they have more wins than St. Louis, but that’s because the Cardinals missed two weeks of action due to a slew of positive COVID-19 tests).
What else did we learn about the Kansas City Royals?
Brad Keller made his fourth start and was trying to maintain his perfect ERA. He was unable to do that and was hit hard by the Cardinals, surrendering five runs in just four innings of work. He wasn’t able to record an out in the fifth inning, instead loading the bases where Greg Holland then allowed those baserunners to score, but they were charged to Keller.
Keller is still in good shape after this outing, sitting with a 2.08 ERA, but he certainly struggled at the end of this start. He had been really impressive prior to coming into this game and even with the poor outing, he had only allowed one run through four innings of work prior to loading the bases in the fifth, so it’s not as if he was bad throughout.
Chance Adams got an opportunity to pitch in relief and was not good, surrendering three runs in 1.2 innings of work, now good for a 16.20 ERA. Randy Rosario pitched 0.2 scoreless innings and while Kyle Zimmer didn’t allow any runs in his one inning of work, he walked three batters.
Hopefully the Kansas City Royals can turn things around on Tuesday night for the second game of this series. Royals fans don’t feel as much of a need to prove themselves to the Cardinals anymore, as the Royals have more recently won a World Series (it’s been almost a decade for St. Louis) and the rivalry just doesn’t feel as relevant anymore because of that.
Still, it’d be nice to get a win against the other team from Missouri. The Royals will have two more cracks at the Cardinals in this series.
Twenty-nine games down, 31 to go!