Despite player's coming together for looking for change, Royals fall 3-2 to A's

By MATT PIKE

Following Saturday’s loss to the Athletics, the locker room of the Kansas City Royals stayed closed as the players held a players only meeting, having a moment to say that things needed to change and they needed to play better. 

Despite that meeting, the Royals fell to the Athletics 3-2 on Sunday afternoon, making the team whose temporary home is in Sacramento, California the only team besides the New York Yankees to sweep the Royals, moving the Kansas City losing streak to six games. 

The loss was to no fault of St. Joseph’s Noah Cameron, who started the game and bounced back from a rough start to the Yankees, pitching five shutout innings, giving up four hits and walking one while striking out seven batters, lowering his ERA back below 2.00 to 1.91. 

Cameron left the game with a 2-0 lead, which the Royals gave him in the third inning.  Kyle Isbel led the inning off with a double, and moved to third on a sacrifice bunt by Maikel Garcia before scoring on a double by Bobby Witt Jr, who snapped a streak of four hitless games.  Witt Jr moved to third on a balk by A’s starter Jeffrey Springs, and then scored on a single by Vinnie Pasquantino.

Cameron though, ended up with a no decision, after being replaced by John Schreiber in the sixth inning.  Schreiber gave up a single to Jacob Wilson but got Brent Rooker to line out to right field for the first out.  In the next at bat though, Austin Wynns hit his fifth home run of the season to right field, driving in Wilson, to tie up up the game.

The game remained tied until the ninth inning after shutdown efforts by Angel Zerpa and Lucas Erceg from the bullpen before Carlos Estévez was called on in the ninth.  Estévez surrendered a leadoff home run to rookie Nick Kurtz, giving the A’s the 3-2 lead.  After getting out of the inning, the Royals pinch hit Drew Waters, who got on first with a single, but could not push him across with three straight outs following the hit to end the game. 

With his five shutout innings, Cameron became the first pitcher in MLB history to record at least five innings pitched and allow no more than one run in six of his first seven career games.  The previous record was five, done by 13 others, including Christy Mathewson and Kerry Wood.

With the loss, Estévez falls to 2-2 on the year, pitching one inning giving up the one hit, walking one and striking out one.  At the plate, Witt Jr was 2-for-4 with an RBI.  Pasquantino was also 2-for-4 with an RBI while Freddy Fermin was 2-for-3.

Kansas City is off on Monday.  They travel to Arlington, Texas on Tuesday to take on the Rangers.  Seth Lugo (3-5, 3.18 ERA) is set to take the mound for the Royals against Jack Leiter (4-3, 3.88 ERA)  for the Rangers.  First pitch is at 7:05pm, pregame will begin at 6:30 on KFEQ (680AM/95.3FM).

You can follow Matt on X @KfeqMatt.