The Rockies were hosting the Kansas City Royals last night. As a Minnesota Twins fan, I somehow always liked the Kansas City Royals even though we have always been division rivals. I think part of the reason was the efficient way they ran the franchise in the early days. I hadn’t seen them in quite a while, so I picked their game in the package I purchased.
I’ve seen Kansas City play in person 4 times. However, I have seen them play in four different states if that is any help. The first time I saw them play was the early 80s in Texas. George Brett wasn’t 100 percent and went 0 for 4. Late in the 80s I saw them play in Milwaukee. Brett made some nice plays at third and made some nice plays in field. He had one single in four at bats. If that was all I knew about him I would have thought the Royals played Brett just for his fielding.
My third game was actually in Kansas City and was in this century. I was going to training in Kansas City and someone in the class announced that his brother-in-law had tickets for $7 for the next night’s game. We had a lot of volunteers to go to that game. We were on an upper level, but still had a great view of the game. The Royals had many down years at this point and the Royals faced Roy Halladay. The Royals didn’t let Halladay’s Hall of Fame credentials stop them and chased him out of the box early for an easy victory.
This time the Royals had a potential Hall of Fame pitcher Zack Greinke pitching for him. Let us say he has met my Hall of Fame credentials and most other Sabermetrics people. However, like Halladay when I saw him in person this was not his night, nor was it the night for a lot of other pitchers.
Spoiler alert it wasn’t a great night for the pitchers as the final score was 14-10 Royals. There was also 4 errors in the games, without a lot of real good plays so the defense wasn’t a lot of help.
Early in the game conditions seemed great for a number of runs. My friend who said in an earlier game he hadn’t seen enough scoring at the games he came to, did not have the complaint last night. Kansas City proved this by getting the first 5 batter on base. It was 2-0 with the bases loaded. However, Kyle Freeland then pulled a Houdini and got out of the inning with a force out at home and a double play. For those who don’t know what a Houdini is it is when a pitcher has the bases loaded and no outs and doesn’t let in a run.
That was the highlight of Freeland’s night as he pitched 4.2 innings giving up 8 runs, 6 earned with zero strikeouts (is that possible?) for a game score of 10. Meanwhile Greinke was pitching better but not great. He gave up 3 runs in four innings, which in this game was pretty good pitching. His fielders (first baseman) didn’t help as an error helped lead to two unearned runs. What happened with a runner on second and one out on a ground ball to shortstop the first baseman lost the throw in the sun. Two singles followed to give the Rockies a temporary lead. The strange this was two to three batters later the ball boy ran out with sunglasses for the first baseman. First of all, I know that rightfield is the sun field for the Rockies which is the reason I sit down the left field line if I can. In the evening when the sun is setting over the mountains it bothers the whole right side of the field including the fans in the first baseman. I think a major league team should know this before the game. Then why did it take so long for the ball boy to give the first baseman a pair of glasses. I wonder if they went to the concession shops and bought a pair. Very strange.
However, coming into the 5th Greinke had retired 8 straight batters and had an 8-3 victory. However, he didn’t look sharp in the 5th. After a leadoff groundout, Greinke let three of the next four batters single. The score was now 8-4 but with 2 outs. I was sure this was going to be Greinke’s last inning as he was close to 100 pitches. Greinke came through be striking out the next batter. Unfortunately for him the pitch was way out of the strike zone, the catcher didn’t grab it and the runner made it to first. Now it was 8-5 with the tying run coming to the plate in Brandon Rodgers.
I thought Greinke was gone especially when the manager came to the mound. He actually got to stay in. I don’t know if he was trying to get Greinke the win (Greinke had pitched well but had an 0-2 record, which was more important in the old days) or saw Brandon Rodgers .169 batting average, but he let Greinke stayed in the game. However, Rogers had seemed to be swinging the bat better in his last few games. This worked out for the Rockies as Rogers hit a double to deep left field to get two runs and make the score 8-7 Royals. Elias Diaz came in and got the last out.
Then the game consisted of the Royals stretching their lead and the Rockies scoring runs back but losing ground. The Rockies came into the bottom of the eighth trailing 14-9. A leadoff homerun by Sam Hilliard made the score 14-10. This is Coors Field fans; the game is not over. The Rockies end up loading the bases with two outs bringing the tying run to the plate in Brandon Rodgers. Now in hero status, Rogers already had 3 hits, 2 doubles and a home run. He had scored 2 runs and driven in 4. So, he was directly involved in half the Rockies runs. This was the big moment for him and Rockies fans. He hit the ball very hard, but we the fans soon realized that the ball wasn’t hit quite hard enough.
That was basically it as the ninth was played in record time, for this game, with all six batters making out.
