<\/p>\n
Tonight\u2019s match was about the closest you can get to playoff baseball on May 1. Bryan Woo<\/a> and Cole Ragans<\/a> are both considered aces on their staffs, though you might not know it from how they performed tonight, and each took home a no-decision. There were multiple lead changes, and the bullpens were tested to their limits. In the end, the Royals emerged victorious in their first contest of a new month.<\/p>\n Things got off to a fast start for KC. If you sat down a little late, you\u2019d have found KC in front 3-0 before you even got logged into Apple TV. Maikel Garcia<\/a> singled to right, Bobby Witt Jr.<\/a> singled to shortstop, and Vinnie Pasquantino \u2013 freshly returned to the lineup after aggravating a back injury during the first contest in Sacramento \u2013 also singled to right to drive in the first run of the game. Connor Joe<\/a> had a fielding error, and the Royals had a run in with runners at second and third with no outs for Salvador Perez.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Perez, of course, has been a lightning rod for criticism during the Royals\u2019 slow start, but he whalloped a sinker that got a little too much of the plate down the left field line to drive in both runners. Carter Jensen<\/a> and Jac Caglianone<\/a> both made outs, but Isaac Collins<\/a> parachuted a pop-up down the left field line to bring home Salvy with two outs and give the Royals a 4-0 lead.<\/p>\n Cole Ragans, unfortunately, was not destined to look like the same guy who had absolutely dazzled the Angels. He walked J.P. Crawford<\/a>, struck out Cal Raleigh<\/a>, and then gave up a massive two-run home run to Julio Rodr\u00edguez<\/a>. Rodr\u00edguez, of course, is known for turning things on once May starts, and he didn\u2019t take any time with that tonight. Ragans settled down a bit until the fifth inning \u2013 though he still flashed some poor control at times. In the fifth, he allowed Connor Joe to bash his first MLB home run in more than two years. Fortunately, the bases were empty, and the Royals still led 4-3.<\/p>\n Over the same span, however, Bryan Woo hadn\u2019t allowed a single baserunner since Collins\u2019 single. But Vinnie put an end to that really quickly, leading off the sixth.<\/p>\n Two outs later, Jac joined his Italian-American brother.<\/p>\n Those dingers felt even more important as Cole gave up his third home run of the night in the bottom of the inning to Randy Arozerena. He was pulled for Nick Mears<\/a>, who got the job done, recording the final two outs of the inning despite walking the first batter he faced.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Daniel Lynch IV<\/a>, only recently installed as the Royals\u2019 preferred seventh-inning pitcher, had to face the 9-1-2 hitters in the bottom of the inning. He got behind Leo Rivas<\/a> 3-0 before striking him out looking, walked Crawford, struck out Raleigh, but gave up a game-tying home run to the magma-hot Rodriguez. Game tied. Lynch became the tenth Royals\u2019 reliever with a Meltdown this year. The only players to pitch in relief for KC and not accrue one are Bailey Falter<\/a>, Mitch Spence<\/a>, Mason Black<\/a>, and Tyler Tolbert<\/a>. In other words, the only guys who haven\u2019t been allowed to pitch in high leverage.<\/p>\n But hey, Sal was leading off the top of the eighth. What could go wrong? Nothing! He led off with a double into left center, advanced to third on a Carter Jensen groundout, and then Matt Quatraro made the controversial decision to pinch-hit Lane Thomas<\/a> for Jac Caglianone. It worked, and Thomas drove in the go-ahead run by flipping an inside changeup over the second baseman\u2019s head.<\/p>\n Matt Strahm<\/a> pitched a scoreless eighth, striking out two and walking one. Then it was Lucas Erceg<\/a>\u2019s turn in the ninth inning. He needed to record a clean inning in order to prevent Julio Rodr\u00edguez from getting a chance to finish what he had started.<\/p>\n We diagnosed Erceg\u2019s issues<\/a> with his slider just yesterday, so Lucas led with his four-seam fastball and sinker against two lefties and the switch-hitting Raleigh. He threw no changeups; he threw only two sliders. For what it\u2019s worth, he doesn\u2019t often throw his slider against left-handed hitters; only about 22% of the time compared to 33% of the time against righties. Regardless, he got two pop-ups and struck out Crawford with a beautiful front hip goofy slider. It took Erceg only 12 pitches, 8 of which were strikes, to pitch a perfect ninth. It\u2019s still a bit concerning to see his slider and changeup MIA, and he had trouble locating the four-seamer, but a win is a win!<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n The Royals have now scored 6+ runs in 6 of their last 9 games. Wouldn\u2019t you know it, they\u2019ve won 6 of their last 9! It\u2019s probably not a coincidence that they did this while Vinnie was going 6-for-24, all but 1 for extra bases, plus walking 6 times and only striking out 3. Oh yeah, Salvy has gone 10-for-36 with 2 homers and 2 doubles in the same span. It\u2019s almost like having the middle of the order show up in positive ways can make this offense look a lot better! Prior to the nine-game stretch, Salvy had a .536 OPS with Vinnie at .470. Checking in again after tonight\u2019s game, they\u2019re at .615 and .631, respectively. Sure, those still aren\u2019t good, but they represent MASSIVE improvements in a very short span. That highlights how bad they were, how hot they\u2019ve been, and how small the sample sizes still are in this young season.<\/p>\n The Royals will attempt to continue their perfect May tomorrow night, though it promises to be even more difficult than tonight. Seth Lugo<\/a> (2.63 ERA) will go for the Royals, but Emerson Hancock<\/a> (2.86 ERA) will go for the Mariners<\/a>. It\u2019s anyone\u2019s guess if they can pull it off, but it sure would be sweet to go into Sunday afternoon with a chance to sweep their way to a winning road trip.<\/p>\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 sports.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tonight\u2019s match was about the closest you can get to playoff baseball on May 1. Bryan Woo and Cole Ragans are both considered aces on their staffs, though you might not know it from how they performed tonight, and each took home a no-decision. There were multiple lead changes, and the bullpens were tested to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2398879,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[340898,91466,376615,349015,360072,311239,445724,350963,450392,424369,374447,279830,349976,43627,423377,374969,311283,313842,345068,411169,349016,377404,311236,424370,77699,244474,22091,326961,102808],"class_list":["post-2398878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty","tag-bailey-falter","tag-bobby-witt-jr","tag-bryan-woo","tag-cal-raleigh","tag-carter-jensen","tag-cole-ragans","tag-connor-joe","tag-daniel-lynch-iv","tag-emerson-hancock","tag-isaac-collins","tag-j-p-crawford","tag-jac-caglianone","tag-julio-rodriguez","tag-kansas-city-royals","tag-lane-thomas","tag-leo-rivas","tag-lucas-erceg","tag-maikel-garcia","tag-mariners","tag-mason-black","tag-matt-strahm","tag-mitch-spence","tag-new-york-yankees","tag-nick-mears","tag-salvador-perez","tag-seth-lugo","tag-the-royals","tag-tyler-tolbert","tag-vinnie-pasquantino"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Resilient-Royals-strike-again-defeat-Mariners-7-6.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2398878","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=2398878"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2398878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2398880,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2398878\/revisions\/2398880"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2398879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2398878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2398878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2398878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}