The Athletics and Kansas City Royals battled in the rubber game of their three-game series Thursday afternoon in West Sacramento. After exchanging early blows, the Athletics took the lead and never gave it back, fending off several Royals comeback attempts to win 6-3.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The Royals scored first against A\u2019s starting pitcher Jeffrey Springs. The first batter of the game, third baseman Maikel Garcia doubled. With two outs and the bases loaded, outfielder Starling Marte singled to right, giving his team an early 1-0 lead. Springs proceeded to limit the damage by striking out Carter Jensen, the lone lefty in his team\u2019s lineup, to end the inning and get out of the bases-loaded jam.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The A\u2019s immediately answered back against Kansas City\u2019s starting pitcher Noah Cameron. Shortstop Jacob Wilson singled to right and then designated hitter Shea Langeliers doubled down the left field line past Garcia at third. With one out, right fielder Colby Thomas walked to load the bases. That set the stage for third baseman Darell Hern\u00e1iz, whose hard-hit infield single off of Garcia\u2019s hand scored Wilson to tie the game at one. Like his counterpart, Cameron got out of a bases loaded jam by retiring the next two A\u2019s hitters.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Garcia showed his wrist was ok, hitting a two-out solo home run in the second inning that just eluded leaping left fielder Carlos Cortes to put his team back in front.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Once again, the A\u2019s answered. Lawrence Butler walked, Wilson singled and Langeliers lined his second double in as many innings to score Butler and tie the game. The team\u2019s potent offense was not done yet. First baseman Nick Kurtz, who struck out in an RBI opportunity in the first inning, crushed a two-RBI double to give the Athletics their first lead of the game.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
With two outs, Kurtz scored from second when Royals second baseman Nick Loftin threw errantly to first after ranging to field the grounder off Hern\u00e1iz\u2019s bat.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
With the A\u2019s holding a 5-2 advantage heading into the third inning, it was the Royals turn to rally. However, Springs finally turned in a shutdown inning, striking out Jensen for a second-straight at-bat as the Royals stranded two runners on base.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Following three laborious innings, right-handed reliever Luis Medina replaced Springs, who went to the clubhouse with the team\u2019s trainer. According to the team\u2019s MLB.com reporter Martin Gallegos, Springs exited the game with right hip soreness.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
As a result, the team had to turn to their bullpen earlier than they would have liked. Medina got the first two hitters he faced out before the Royals loaded the bases via a double, walk and a hit by pitch. The A\u2019s reliever averted disaster by getting first baseman Salvador Perez to harmlessly fly out to Butler in center field.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
In the middle innings of this game, the Athletics offense went quiet, although Cortes did single in the fifth, extending his hitting streak to ten games. Cameron settled down after his early struggles. He allowed just two more hits and worked into the sixth inning before being removed with one on and one out.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Medina ended up getting the win. He threw 51 pitches over 2 2\/3 scoreless innings. The Royals squared up several pitches against the A\u2019s long reliever, but failed to bring a run home. Scott Barlow replaced Medina with two Royals on base and two outs in the sixth. He got Kansas City\u2019s outfielder Lane Thomas to ground out as the Royals continued their struggles with runners in scoring position.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Seeking insurance runs, Langeliers led off the bottom of the seventh with his third double of the afternoon. Today was the first time he had ever hit three doubles in one game. With first base open, the Royals intentionally walked Kurtz, extending his record-breaking walk streak to 19 consecutive games. Hern\u00e1iz made the visitors rue that decision as his third infield single of the game scored Langeliers to pad the A\u2019s lead.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
In the top of the eighth, the Royals got one back. Facing left-hander Brady Basso, catcher Elias D\u00edaz hit his first home run of the season over the right-field fence to trim the deficit to three. That was the closest they would come. Right-hander Jack Perkins only gave up one hit in a scoreless ninth, securing his third save and more importantly the series victory.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Tomorrow, the first-place A\u2019s begins a weekend series against fan-favorite Stephen Vogt\u2019s Cleveland Guardians. Right-hander J.T Ginn is scheduled to start for the A\u2019s. He is good to go despite exiting his last start early with arm soreness. Ginn will be opposed by Guardians\u2019 left-hander Joey Cantillo, who is 1-1 with a 2.97 ERA through his first six starts of the season.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.athleticsnation.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Athletics and Kansas City Royals battled in the rubber game of their three-game series Thursday afternoon in West Sacramento. After exchanging early blows, the Athletics took the lead and never gave it back, fending off several Royals comeback attempts to win 6-3. The Royals scored first against A\u2019s starting pitcher Jeffrey Springs. The first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2397512,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[382648,451612],"class_list":["post-2397511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty","tag-as-game-recaps","tag-athletics-scores-and-standings"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/As-Hold-off-Royals-to-Win-Series-Finale.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2397511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2397511"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2397511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2397513,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2397511\/revisions\/2397513"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2397512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2397511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2397511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2397511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}