Major League Baseball: Red Sox 5, Royals 4
BOSTON With the sun beating down on an 86-degree Wednesday afternoon in Boston, the Royals all stood with their backs to home plate as they watched a replay of Mookie Betts second home run of the game soaring over Fenway Parks left-field wall.
All, anyway, but Royals left-handed pitcher Danny Duffy, who watched it live, muttering to himself and shaking his head.
As the ball cut through the air at 98 mph, it hugged the third-base line. It had the launch angle for a home run 31 degrees but it almost didnt seem Betts got enough of the pitch to drive
it fair into the Green Monster seats. After 5.1 seconds, it avoided hooking foul of the left-field pole. As Betts rounded the bases, the tie-breaking homer gave the Red Sox a fifth-inning advantage in what became a 5-4 Royals loss in the rubber match of a three-game series.
And the irony of this 22nd loss of the Royals season: Duffy should have been the Red Soxs kryptonite.
Like I told Danny after the game, this is a tough club to make mistakes on, manager Ned Yost said. Because theyre going to make you pay. And Danny didnt make a lot of them. I thought he threw the ball really well. But just the two change-ups that he pulled back into the middle of the zone, they just hit it pretty good.
Duffy had things going for him. He was up against one of the best teams in baseball but the Red Sox had one flaw in their game. They entered Wednesday with baseballs worst batting average against left-handed pitchers. They had only clubbed four homers against lefties.
For three innings, Duffy played the part. He held the Red Sox to one hit and faced the minimum while tossing 31 pitches. The Royals offense, meanwhile, built a 3-0 lead despite Jorge Soler losing track of the number of outs in the first inning and the Royals batting 2 for 6 with runners in scoring position.
But in the fourth, Bet-ts drilled his first home run of the game 452 feet to left field. Hanley Ramirez drew a walk two batters later, and scored when J.D. Martinez launched his own homer over the Green Monster. The Red Sox went 4 for 7 with three runs and two homers in the inning, and wound up adding five more hits against Duffy.
Betts set a Red Sox record while his team improved their worst stat. His 440-foot homer off Duffy in the seventh marked his fourth three-homer game in his career. In his fifth major-league season, he surpassed Ted Williams for most three-homer games in club history.
After Betts made his curtain call, Yost removed Duffy with two outs in the seventh. The ace of the Royals rotation remained winless for the season. The Royals, still searching for their first series victory of the year, fell to 8-22.
As Yost reflected on this convoluted beginning to his Opening Day starters eighth major-league season, he didnt hesitate to praise Duffys progress. Duffy may have the second-highest ERA (5.63) in the rotation but hes racked up a team-leading 34 strikeouts in 381/3 innings spanning seven starts. The chase rate on Duffys slider has gradually improved, up 2.6 percent from last seasons 30.7 rate through his first six starts of the season. In the same span, hed mixed in his curveball 2.6 percent of the time, compared to just 0.9 in 2017.
The signs for a better outcome, Yost believes, are there.
Today I thought it was the best stuff that hes had, he said. He made a couple mistakes.
Duffy just needs the outs.
