KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Any team can beat any team on any night. Anything can happen in extra innings.
And on and on go the qualifiers that speak to baseball’s unpredictability and help to justify any number of losses in a 162-game season.
Friday’s game, from the errors in the middle to the improbable ninth inning to the bedlam of the 10th, was about as unhinged as baseball gets.
But the Padres are well past the process being anywhere near as important as the result.
The result is what matters to a team hanging onto its postseason chances by its fingernails and trying to prove to the front office it is worth investing in at the trade deadline.
So here is the result:
The Royals beat the Padres 7-6 Friday with a walk-off single by Carter Jensen in a 10th inning that saw the Padres score three times and the Royals four.
Now, about how the game got there.
“That was a tough one,” Padres manager Craig Stammen said. “Made a lot of good comebacks. There was a lot of good in there for our team, except for that last inning. Just unfortunate how that shook out.”
A flurry of insanity got the game to extra innings. And it got crazier from there.
Royals’ right-hander Alex Lange was one out from ending his team’s first victory in six games when Ty France sent a sinker in the heart of the strike zone 421 feet and into the seats beyond left field to tie the game 3-3 in the top of the ninth.
In the bottom of the ninth, the Royals were a hit or a well-placed grounder or a fly ball to the outfield from winning after loading the bases with no outs before Mason Miller struck out three consecutive batters.
“It’s unbelievable,” Xander Bogaerts said. “Ty with that big swing, and then you’re going to extras. And before that, Miller coming out of that jam. And we put on three. Not one. Not two. Three. Yeah, tonight wasn’t our night. This one stings, for sure.”
Miguel Andujar led off the 10th with his third double of the game, scoring automatic runner Jake Cronenworth. Pinch-hitter Sung-Mun Song laid down a sacrifice bunt that Royals pitcher Lucas Erceg bobbled, putting runners at the corners with no outs. A single by Fernando Tatis Jr. drove in Andujar and moved Song to third. After a groundout by Jackson Merrill moved Tatis up a base, Bogaerts’ sacrifice fly gave the Padres a 6-3 lead.
None of the Royals’ four singles off Kyle Hart in the 10th had an exit velocity greater than 73 mph.
Salvador Perez flared a ball to left to start the inning, moving Pasquantino, the automatic runner, to third. Pasquantino scored on an infield single by Michael Massey, and the Royals loaded the bases on Nick Loftin’s bunt single. Another run scored on Isaac Collins’ groundout, and Jensen’s single through the left side ended it.
“Broken-bat single, jam-shot single, groundout, and then another jam shot,” Cronenworth said.
The Padres came out of the All-Star break needing to win a lot of games. And the Royals, who were 21 games under .500 and tied for the major leagues’ worst record heading into Friday, seemed a ripe first opponent.
Michael King, ostensibly the Padres’ only dependable starting pitcher, struggled through five innings but allowed only Lane Thomas’ home run leading off the bottom of the second inning.
The Padres took advantage of the kind of mistake bad teams make to go ahead 2-1 in the fifth inning, scoring two runs on an error by Massey. But an error by Bogaerts led to the Royals tying the game in the sixth.
The Padres’ two runs came after France took a curveball in the backside to start the inning and went to third on Andujar’s one-out double. Luis Campusano followed with a grounder up the middle that was not going to score France until the ball caromed off Massey’s glove at second base and rolled into center field. With that, both runners scored.
Bradgley Rodriguez began the sixth by yielding a single to Thomas and walking Pasquantino. He then got a grounder to shortstop by Perez that would have at least eliminated Pasquantino at second base had Bogaerts not thrown the ball wide of the bag, allowing Thomas to score while Pasquantino ran to third base.
“That was a big play — the one with me, the error,” Bogaerts said. “I knew who was running at first and the one who hit it, so I figured I might get (the double play).”
But after the slow grounder off the end of Perez’s bat, Bogaerts was just trying for one out, but he essentially overthought it.
“I was just trying to get one and stay with the double play in order,” he said. “I just I caught it, threw kind of off — not off balance, but not normally. … You kind of predetermine what you’re going to do ahead of time, but I’m not anticipating Salvy hitting one of those infield hits that I hit.”
The Royals took a 3-2 lead in the eighth inning after a single a fielder’s choice and a stolen base on Massey’s two-out single off Adrian Morejón, who was working his second inning. France’s 12th home run of the season tied it 3-3.
“That’s a tough one,” France said. “We fought back, played a good game, and they put together a really good 10th inning. They came to play today. That’s really all it is. I thought we played a good game, and they just outplayed us that last inning. … I know they’re not having the best season, but they’re still major league players, and there’s a lot of talent on that team. They put together a good inning.”
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.sandiegouniontribune.com ’
