Devon Travis has embraced the month of August with both arms and, in the process, has put the squeeze on the Kansas City Royals.
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“I think what they do is they play great defense”, Blue Jays manager John Gibbons said of the Royals. “Well, there ya go”. Toronto OF Jose Bautista is 5-for-32 in his last eight games.3.
His initial deficit came four pitches into the game. Russell Martin was 4-for-21; Kevin Pillar was 3-for-20; Darwin Barney was 1-for-18.
They returned from a winning trip without much hitting. They have been pitching well, however, and have allowed three runs or fewer in 11 of their past 13 games. You can safely call that a slump. “We really haven’t been swinging it good since that last homestand”. We’ve been kind of in a little rut, so we’re due to explode. They have not recorded more than three runs in nine straight games, which is a club record for one season. They went 11 straight games scoring three or fewer runs, but that was stretched over two seasons from October 4, 1991-April 14, 1992. They’re world champs. They’re that for a reason and they held us in check. What’d we score, one?
Morales hit an eighth-inning grand slam and Yordano Ventura pitched a sturdy 6 2/3 frames as the Kansas City Royals topped the Toronto Blue Jays 7-1 at Kauffman Stadium on Sunday.
The Blue Jays entered Friday tied with Baltimore for the American League East division lead. “It’s just one of those spurts”. They kept spoiling until they got a good pitch to hit.
Stroman was mostly fine facing a Royals lineup that didn’t make it easy for him on an overcast afternoon. The Blue Jays starter wasn’t almost as efficient as he’d like to be, often working deep into counts as Kansas City hitters fouled off tough two-seamers down in the zone.
Ventura, who claimed his first win since June 17, was charged with one run on five hits and four walks, throwing 106 pitches. I just tried to open my eyes as wide as I can against him. “It was one of those days where I felt like I was battling all day”.
Ventura started off better than either of the Royals previous starters in this series; he struck out Devon Travis instead of allowing a home run. “I can make that play 10 out of 10 times if it happens again”. Mondesi slipped and fell so he had to stay at first, ; but he stole second on a hit and run two pitches later when Alcides Escobar swung through the high pitch.
“Obviously, Mondesi’s extremely fast, so you’ve got to hurry with him”, Stroman said. The Jays are 13th in stolen bases, so they have a hard time resorting to a speed game when their power game isn’t working. They don’t have to beat you with homers. They then tacked on a fourth run in the sixth. They’re a real good hitting team. Sanchez burned 24 pitches to survive the inning. But he was encouraged by his ability to locate his two-seamer down in the zone, a key factor to his season turnaround since early July. Volquez has a 9.82 ERA in losing his past two starts.
“I feel like my sinker is where it needs to be”, Stroman said. “It’s just a matter of mixing in my other pitches in certain counts”.
With his sinker and with fastball command, Stroman was able to get his share of ground balls, which is his bread and butter but the Royals found more holes than usual.
Over on the Blue Jays’ side, they played Kansas City this weekend, also splitting the first two games.
YANKEES 13, INDIANS 7: Starlin Castro hit a third-inning grand slam off Josh Tomlin that gave the Yankees a six-run lead at NY, while Jacoby Ellsbury had his first four-hit game since May 3 a year ago.
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Still, the Royals never needed those runs as the Blue Jays offence continued to spin its wheels. “If somebody’s scuffling and we want to change things up, we can do that”. I think at the end of it, it’s all said and done and we can move forward now. Somedays you’re not going to have your best stuff. “So, we definitely didn’t get what we wanted in this series”.
