returned Sunday from the injured list<\/a>, the club is still without Carlos Est\u00e9vez and Nick Mears. The starting rotation is missing left-handers Cole Ragans and Kris Bubic.<\/p>\nIt puts more pressure on the available pitchers. On Saturday, Lucas Erceg blew his fifth save this season. Then Wacha struggled after entering play with a 2.69 ERA.<\/p>\n
The Rangers did their damage in the first inning. Wacha issued a two-out walk and the floodgates opened. Ezequiel Duran hit a two-run triple and later scored on Alejandro Osuna\u2019s RBI single.<\/p>\n
From there, Kyle Higashoika added an RBI double. The four-run frame put Wacha behind, and he never recovered.<\/p>\n
Later, the Rangers manufactured two runs as Josh Jung hit a two-run single.<\/p>\n
\u201cDefinitely a frustrating one on my end,\u201d Wacha said. \u201cYou know, looking back at the first inning, you get two outs and you are one pitch away. And then there are four runs on the board. Those can be frustrating to the pitcher.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wacha was charged with six runs in five innings. He walked four batters \u2014 including an intentional walk to Joc Pederson \u2014 and struck out five batters.<\/p>\n\n\n
<\/div>
\nMichael Wacha #52 of the Kansas City Royals pitches against the Texas Rangers during the fourth inning at Globe Life Field on May 31, 2026 in Arlington, Texas.<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n
In the seventh inning, the Royals got on the board. Lane Thomas tallied a pinch-hit RBI single off Rangers reliever Jalen Beeks.<\/p>\n
An inning later, Michael Massey hit a two-run homer to cut further into the deficit. It was his fourth homer of the season but came a bit too late.<\/p>\n
The Royals dropped to 22-37. They are a season-high 15 games under .500 as the calendar flips to June.<\/p>\n
KC finished May dropping 18 of 28 games. The Royals will continue a 10-game road trip by facing the Cincinnati Reds for three games and the Minnesota Twins in a four-game series.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think when you try harder, you try and grip the bat tighter,\u201d Massey said. \u201cYou try to throw the ball harder, carrying (into) yesterday\u2019s game. Again, it sounds clich\u00e9, but you\u2019ve got to show up the next day. In less than 24 hours, we are going to have Chase Burns staring you down and throwing 100 mph. So you\u2019ve just got to find a way to be ready.\u201d<\/p>\n
What\u2019s next:<\/strong> Right-hander Luinder Avila (0-2, 5.06 ERA) will start opposite Reds right Chase Burns (7-1, 1.96 ERA) on Monday night at Great American Ball Park. First pitch is set for 6:10 p.m. Central.<\/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 www.aol.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Kansas City Royals continue to fall short of expectations. On Sunday, they took a new step toward futility. The Royals lost their sixth straight game, this one 6-3 to the Texas Rangers at Globe Life Field. Kansas City has lost 16 times in its last 19 games, a stretch that began May 10. In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2439704,"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":[454595,310650,311274,313843,311237,395253,27155,307792,402966,449314,22091],"class_list":["post-2439703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty","tag-jack-leiter","tag-kansas-city","tag-matt-quatraro","tag-michael-massey","tag-michael-wacha","tag-playing-the-game","tag-royals","tag-texas-rangers","tag-the-kansas-city-royals","tag-the-rangers","tag-the-royals"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/How-the-Royals-hit-a-new-low-after-being-swept.com2Fen2Faol_kansas_city_star_mcclatchy_articles_4202F7841913930408fda91c.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2439703","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=2439703"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2439703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2439705,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2439703\/revisions\/2439705"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2439704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2439703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2439703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2439703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}