<\/p>\n
It has been said that when Stephen Kolek is getting ground outs in the first inning, you can tell it\u2019s going to be a good night. Unfortunately, Kolek didn\u2019t get a groundball until the seventh batter he faced in the first inning, and Nick Loftin<\/a> turned that into an error. But let\u2019s back up a bit.<\/p>\n In the top of the first, Mackenzie Gore<\/a> was not fooling anyone. Lane Thomas<\/a> struck out swinging on a well-located fastball, but Bobby Witt Jr.<\/a> barrelled a line drive to center at 107.4 for the second out. Maikel Garcia<\/a> then lined a single to center at 103.8 MPH, Salvador Perez<\/a> smoked a double down the line at 105.7 MPH. Starling Marte<\/a>, with runners at second and third but two outs, smoked a ground ball up the middle at 102.1 MPH that old friend Nicky Lopez<\/a> turned into an inning-ending groundout despite its expected batting average (xBA) of .590.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n The bottom of the inning had the Rangers also put a runner at second and third with two outs. Backup infielder Ezequiel Duran<\/a> hit a line drive to center with a .990 xBA to score them both. Two errors later, two more runs had scored. If that first inning isn\u2019t exemplary of the Royals\u2019 2026 \u2013 failing to drive in runners despite a moderately good effort, followed by giving up runs in the exact same situation, and then crumpling \u2013 I don\u2019t know what is.<\/p>\n What makes it the most<\/em> frustrating is that, during the good stretch the Royals had for a couple of weeks, they were playing some of the most resilient baseball I\u2019ve ever seen in my entire life. But the rest of the time, they have the resiliency of wet single-ply.<\/p>\n Anyway, I don\u2019t think we need to recap in detail every single moment of this game. One particularly frustrating moment was when Steven Cruz<\/a>, pitching the sixth inning, allowed a two-run home run to Nicky Lopez. That was Lopez\u2019s eighth career MLB home run in his eighth MLB season. He hadn\u2019t hit one since 2024 until tonight. The Royals scored their lone run in the ninth inning when Rangers reliever Gavin Colyer, the first right-hander the Royals saw all night, walked Maikel Garcia and Salvador Perez to lead off the inning before giving up a nice single to Vinnie Pasquantino<\/a>. He still got two strikeouts and a pop-up to end the game.<\/p>\n One of the most consistent complaints about the Royals this year by fans \u2013 including yours truly \u2013 is that the Royals aren\u2019t just bad, they\u2019re also not really doing anything about it. Vinnie and Salvy not only still bat 3-4 most nights, but they\u2019ve literally had three days off between them. Jac Caglianone<\/a> and Carter Jensen<\/a> still get benched for every lefty despite doing slightly better against them than Vinnie.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n The Royals have also had multiple opportunities to shake things up with off-days following disastrous series that they\u2019ve completely ignored. I sat down with the FanGraphs transaction tracker and determined that the Royals have the fourth-fewest transactions in MLB since the season started, ahead of only the Padres, Cardinals, and Rangers. That includes promotions, demotions, signings, releases, and IL movement. They\u2019ve also still got the entire coaching staff they started the year with.<\/p>\n They are not behaving remotely like a team that feels any urgency about their predicament. One of the reasons they were able to bounce back last season to finish 82-80 was that they acted with urgency during the season, even if they could have used some more in the previous offseason. We haven\u2019t seen any urgency in either the most recent offseason or this season, and it\u2019s gotten pretty old.<\/p>\n Anyway, the Royals will try again tomorrow afternoon. Seth Lugo<\/a> (3.74 ERA) will face off against Kumar Rocker<\/a> (3.96 ERA). The game will start at 3:05 PM CDT. I no longer expect anything to change or anything interesting to happen.<\/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":" It has been said that when Stephen Kolek is getting ground outs in the first inning, you can tell it\u2019s going to be a good night. Unfortunately, Kolek didn\u2019t get a groundball until the seventh batter he faced in the first inning, and Nick Loftin turned that into an error. But let\u2019s back up a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2437935,"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":[91466,360072,351122,478431,279830,452498,423377,424330,313842,347149,478409,350047,77699,244474,428844,347944,340583,22091,102808],"class_list":["post-2437934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty","tag-bobby-witt-jr","tag-carter-jensen","tag-ezequiel-duran","tag-first-inning","tag-jac-caglianone","tag-kumar-rocker","tag-lane-thomas","tag-mackenzie-gore","tag-maikel-garcia","tag-nick-loftin","tag-nicky-lopez","tag-rangers","tag-salvador-perez","tag-seth-lugo","tag-starling-marte","tag-stephen-kolek","tag-steven-cruz","tag-the-royals","tag-vinnie-pasquantino"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Royals-lose-third-straight-blowout-this-time-to-Rangers-9-1.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2437934","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=2437934"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2437934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2437936,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2437934\/revisions\/2437936"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2437935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2437934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2437934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2437934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}