Rays 2, Royals 3
Record: 19-10
Attendance: Not published
This is the fifth one-run game the Rays have dropped this season; they have won only one. Good teams, the ones that get to the post-season, always have a good record in one-run games. Three of those one-run losses were in extra-inning games. That's another category good teams excel at. Neither of these warning signs are critical on May first, but sometime in the next five months they had better learn how to win close games.
Turning the tables on the Rays, Kansas City scored three first inning runs, the big blow a two-run homer by Adalberto Mondesi, and made them hold up for the rest of the game. The Rays had eight hits to the Royals' four and the Royals seemed to be dodging bullets all afternoon, but in the end, the Rays could not push the tying run across after scoring two runs in the second on a Willy Adames double to right. After that both offenses took the rest of the game off.
That suggests good pitching, and both teams got it after opener Ryne Stanek, the Kansas City home boy who had his whole collection of friends and family on hand for his first perfect opening on Monday, collapsed this time around, the first such hiccup in his work in March and April. It was his first loss of the year: one inning, three hits, three runs, one walk, and the homer by Mondesi.
But Jalen Beeks came in for the next six and two-third innings and pitched a near perfect game allowing only one hit and two walks while striking out six. Hunter Wood struck out the only batter he faced in the eighth. But in the end, the near miss 3-2 loss wasn't nearly as hard to take as the second game of the double header, an 8-2 loss pinned on Blake Snell, who lasted three innings giving up six hits, three walks, and seven earned runs.
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