The Royals scored a lot of runs tonight and officially broke the Detroit Tigers.
And wouldn’t you know it, they’ve won eight straight games.
Powered by a whole lot of offense and a brief escalation to fistifuffs, the Royals finished a three-game sweep over the Tigers with a 16-2 win.
It didn’t hurt that the Royals were facing the American League’s punching bag in Anibal Sanchez, who gave up eight hits over the first three innings of the game.
The hit barrage began in the 2nd, with Hosmer leading off the inning with an infield single.
Hosmer stole his fifth bag of the season and with two outs, Alcides Escobar lined a single into left to drive in Hosmer and put the Royals up 1-0.
Whit Merrifield led off the next with his second single of the evening and advanced to 2nd on a Sanchez balk. Jorge Bonifacio followed suit with a single of his own, driving in Merrifield to extend the Royals lead to 2-0.
Lorenzo Cain grounded out to give Sanchez his first out of the inning, but the Royals followed with three consecutive singles from Hosmer, Mike Moustakas and Brandon Moss. When the dust settled, the Royals were up 4-0.
In the end, Sanchez didn’t make it out of the 4th inning, being relieved of duty with two outs in the 4th after a Cain ground ball single.
He finished up his evening after surrendering four runs on nine hits in his 3.2 innings, none of which were extra-base hits. He also walked two and struck out four.
It should be noted that only three of those nine hits left the bat at 90 MPH or harder, surely making Jason La Canfora’s stomach turn.
While the 2014 Royals were reincarnated for the first three innings of the game, Ian Kennedyquietly put together a nice recovery start, giving up just one run on three hits over six innings of work.
His only run being surrendered in the 5th on an RBI double by Jose Iglesias that cut the Royals lead to 4-1.
The Royals, however, would put together quite the response two innings later.
Kansas City blew the game wide open in the 7th, scoring nine runs and sending 12 batters to the plate.
Cain started off the inning with a much needed double. It was his second hit of the night, his first extra-base since July 19 and just his third extra-base hit of July.
Back-to-back singles by Hosmer and Moustakas followed, with the latter driving in Cain to put the Royals up 5-1.
Escobar followed by doubling in Hosmer before Drew Butera brought in Moustakas with a single of his own to boost the Royals lead to 7-1.
Two more RBI singles and a 5-2 force out later, Hosmer would find himself back at the plate, this time with the bases loaded.
He proceeded to deposit a 1-0 Warwick Saupold changeup over the right-centerfield fence to put the dagger in the Tigers, giving the Royals a 13-1 lead.
It was Hosmer’s first career grand slam.
The Tigers, however, came roaring back in the bottom half of the inning with an RBI double play from Alex Avila to chip the deficit down to 13-2.
Yes, that was sarcastic.
The Royals added a few more runs for good measure in the 9th, including a Hosmer single, his 5th hit and 6th RBI of the night. It was after his single that things got interesting.
Bruce Rondon brushed Moustakas back with a fastball on the first pitch of his at-bat immediately following Hosmer’s single.
Rondon came back at Moustakas with another fastball on the next pitch, this time connecting with Moustakas’ hip and immediately being ejected from the game.
Moustakas was not happy and he let Rondon know it. Moss was also not happy, and let Tigers catcher James McCann know about it. And then Danny Duffy came flying out of nowhere wanting to fight someone.
It was quite a scene.
The inning eventually ended with the Royals scoring two more runs and with Andrew Romineon the mound.
Yes, it was that kind of night for the Tigers.
The score settled at 16-2, tying a season high in runs for the Royals that they set just six days ago, against these same Tigers. They did so on 22 hits, only three of which were for extra-bases, and 30 men left on base.
It was a good night for the offense.
Source: http://bit.ly/2ePXe1h
