3 homers can't take away from Marsh's encouraging start

NEW YORK -- Alec Marsh’s Major League career is only four starts old, but the 25-year-old righty is already racking up numerous lessons that should aid him as he continues to forge his own path.

The lesson on Friday night at Yankee Stadium? Remain calm and stay the course.

“I mean, it’s easy to crumble and fold here,” said Marsh, after taking the loss in the Royals’ 5-4 defeat to the Yankees. “To me, it’s just a reminder of like, ‘Hey, it’s the same game. That’s already happened. … What are you going to do? Are you going to fold, or are you going to get back in there and attack these guys?’

“That’s always been my mentality: Get back in there. Take a deep breath, refocus, step off and get the next guy.”

Coming off the highs of an 11-strikeout performance against the Rays in his previous outing, Marsh received a more mixed bag of results against the Yankees. Over 5 1/3 innings, Marsh allowed five hits, two walks and two hit batters, and he struck out three. The five hits don’t sound catastrophic, but considering that three of them were homers, it made for a lot of moments when Marsh had to shake off the cheers of the sellout crowd.

“I think the majority of the story is that a couple of bad pitches over the plate just got me today,” said Marsh. “Moving forward, just getting back to work and making sure that those misses aren’t so middle-middle and just making them a little better.”

Franchy Cordero’s solo homer in the second inning came off a slider that fizzled out over the middle of the plate. Billy McKinney’s three-run blast in the fourth -- which Marsh found the most upsetting because it came directly after Michael Massey hit a three-run homer in the top of the frame -- was struck on a hanging curveball. And Gleyber Torres’ solo shot in the fifth came on a belt-high, 2-0 fastball that bounced off the top of the wall in right-center.

But those three mistakes were surrounded by an encouraging performance in a famously hitter-friendly park that caters to deep fly balls. Marsh filled up the zone, with 67 of 97 pitches going for strikes, and he produced 14 whiffs, one shy of his season high. He was able to run up his fastball to 97.2 mph, and he induced more groundouts (six) than flyouts (four), which often spells success for a night in the Bronx.

The next step for Marsh is ensuring that he’s able to consistently finish off innings once he gets to two outs, which was his downfall on the McKinney and Torres homers. The McKinney homer came after he walked DJ LeMahieu with two strikes and then gave up a single to Anthony Volpe.

“His stuff was good,” said manager Matt Quatraro. “Looking back at Franchy’s homer, that was on an offspeed pitch. After that, the other runs they scored were with two outs. The big inning with the three-run homer, that was two outs, two strikes with nobody on base. We just got to figure out a way to end that inning.

“He threw the ball well. … There were plenty of positives, and we just have to figure out how to close those innings out.”

The Royals were kept in the game primarily by Massey, who notched his first career multihomer game with the three-run shot in the fourth inning and a solo homer in the eighth, accounting for all four of Kansas City’s runs. Massey, who entered Friday with just one extra-base hit in the month of July, shared that he’s been working hard with the hitting coaches to ensure that his approach plays at all ballparks.

“I think just staying more in the middle of the field,” said Massey. “I kind of saw where my pull rate was this year, and it’s eye-opening. … It’s going to help me be more consistent and be able to drive pitches better.”

And from Massey’s perspective, the short porch in Yankee Stadium’s right field, which provided him bliss with the bat, soured what felt like a valiant effort by Marsh to give the Royals a chance.

“A couple of balls that snuck out,” said Massey. “But I looked up there [at the scoreboard] at one point and saw three hits on four runs. So I thought [Marsh] threw the ball and kept us in the game.”