KC Royals: What we learned after Brady Singer almost threw a no-hitter

The KC Royals won in blowout fashion over the Cleveland Indians, but the night belonged to rookie pitcher Brady Singer, who went 7 2/3 innings before allowing a hit.

No one expected to really be paying a ton of attention to the Kansas City Royals on Thursday night, as their neighbors across the parking lot were opening their Super Bowl defending season. Even though the Chiefs garnered most of the attention, Brady Singer made sure people didn’t completely ignore the Royals.

The 2018 first round pick threw 8 scoreless innings and only allowed one hit during that time, which came with two outs in the 7th inning. He was phenomenal and despite having some good outings in the past, showed strong glimpses of why the Royals took him 17th overall 2 years ago.

Along with the scoreless outing, Singer also struck out 8 batters while only walking 2. He was on his way to a no hitter, but unfortunately that was broken up in the 8th inning. Singer’s performance got his ERA down to 4.66 and fans have now seen what the Florida product is capable of doing on the mound.

Brady Singer had a night for the ages, but the KC Royals offense did their part as well.

The offense has struggled throughout this season, but they were on fire on Thursday, scoring 11 runs (the final score was 11-1 in favor of the boys in blue).

Whit Merrifield looks to be out of his slump, going 3-for-5 with 2 runs and 1 RBI and he’s not batting .268. Maikel Franco went 3-for-5 and accounted for 5 of the Royals’ 11 runs. Edward Olivares has looked good during his time with the Royals, as he went 2-for-5 and is batting .277 for his new team.

Franco, Olivares, and Adalberto Mondesi all hit home runs in this game and it’s nice to see Mondesi starting to hit the ball again. He’s still only batting .204, but he was well below the Mendoza line for quite awhile and he’s seeing the ball a little bit better now, which is something.

Thanks to Brady Singer’s dominant performance, the KC Royals only had to use one reliever.

Matt Harvey made his first appearance out of the bullpen for the Kansas City Royals and he gave up one run in that outing – the only run scored by Cleveland on the evening. Harvey’s ERA is now down to 11.45 and the bullpen will hopefully be a better spot for him because we all know how poorly he did in the rotation.

Next up, the Royals host the Pittsburgh Pirates, who are even worse than the Royals are. The Pirates have just 14 wins on the year and are vying for that number one pick (which the Royals were also doing before this 3-game win streak).

Forty-five games down, 15 to go!