Singer disappoints in latest outing, and also the Royals lose to the Blue Jays 3 days later

The Tortured Pitchers Department

Three days after a singer with Kansas City ties released a series of somewhat depressing and often underwhelming songs in her most recent album, a Singer with Kansas City ties released a series of somewhat depressing and often underwhelming pitches in his most recent start. The result was the third Royals loss in a row, this one to the Toronto Blue Jays in a 5-2 contest.

In a season that marks the 10th anniversary of the magical 2014 season and, by extension, the second golden age of Royals baseball, the Blue Jays do indeed conjure images of heated playoff competition. Still, it’s hard to see any real bad blood between the teams now, especially considering that neither has met in the playoffs for nine years.

But the last time the Royals had scored was in the ninth inning of Saturday’s game, so you would have hoped the team would come out with some verve. They really did not. Yusei Kikuchi, the crafty veteran lefty, sliced and diced his way through the Royals for five innings. For Royals fans, this kind of event is nothing new and indeed it’s not quite a Royals season until the entire lineup looks haunted by a pitcher they should be doing better against (though, to be fair, Kikuchi is quite good).

Kansas City did get on the board in the bottom of the sixth inning. Dairon Blanco doubled to put a man on second base, and then Maikel Garcia hit a gorgeous home run, his fourth of the year. Considering last year it wasn’t until nearly August that Garcia hit his fourth (and final) homer of the year, that’s certainly an improvement—though you’d certainly trade a higher batting average and on base percentage for that power if you had to.

The Royals continued their sixth inning barrage with a Vinnie Pasquantino single and a Salvador Perez double. Unfortunately, Vinnie didn’t score a run, and the Royals lost

On the pitching front, Brady Singer struggled; could never quite pitch any clean innings and he gave up eight baserunners, three of which were walks that all came around to score. Singer looked fine, but he wasn’t fooling Blue Jays batters, who were fearless against Singer’s sinker and kept their eyes open for hanging sliders. Bo Bichette pummeled one such slider to clear the bases in the third inning, which in hindsight was all the Blue Jays needed.

The Royals managed to fight back a little bit in the seventh inning. Unfortunately, Adam Frazier—who some Royals fans have wanted to exile from the team around, oh, day one—ran into a very silly out at home plate for no good reason whatsoever, turning his leadoff double into the second out of the inning. And after the Royals sent their best men to the plate in the eighth with no good results, well, everyone knew all too well what was going to happen in the ninth, and sure enough the bottom of the order didn’t scrape together the requisite three runs.

This game represents the third consecutive loss, the first time the Royals have lost three straight in the season. In a way, this is a little bit of karma for Royals starters killing it for so long; they were bound to run into some issues. Hopefully the Royals can shake it off and stop the losing streak short at three, because historically they’ve let these early season losing become death by a thousand cuts as they slip into five, six, seven, eight-game streaks that become impossible to climb out of.

In any case, happy extended Taylor Swift album release week, and I wish you luck in finding each of the 15 Swift song titles I included in this recap.