LOS ANGELES -- Despite coming up short, the Royals played pesky baseball Monday night while taking on the game’s best.
Facing the reigning back-to-back World Series champions with reigning back-to-back American League Cy Young award winner Tarik Skubal making his Dodger Stadium debut, the Royals battled hard with tough at-bats in their 6-5 loss.
“I thought all of our at-bats, we competed well against him,” Royals manager Matt Quatraro said. “He's obviously tough. We've seen him a bunch of times. I thought we drove up his pitch count, fouled some balls off, laid off some tough pitches. Get him out of there after five with three runs is something.”
The peskiness started right away.
Nick Loftin led off the game with a two-strike single. Bobby Witt Jr. reached on a fielder’s choice and then stole second base. That set up Jac Caglianone's two-strike RBI single up the middle to take an early lead.
In the third inning, Skubal left an 0-2 slider down the middle to Caglianone, who made him pay by hitting a 110.8 mph laser into the seats in right field for a two-run home run.
Caglianone stayed hot at the plate, finishing 2-for-4 with three RBIs. He’s hitting .417 with at least one hit in all nine games in August.
One of the reasons why Caglianone has been finding his stride again recently is his ability to limit the strikeouts. His strikeout rate since returning from the All-Star break is 14.8%. In that span, he’s lowered his strikeout rate on the season from 29.2% to 26.5%.
"Just trying to shrink the zone,” Caglianone said. “Once you get the two strikes, just battle your tail off.”
The Royals showed more resilience later in the game, this time not of the two-strike variety.
After seeing their lead disappear with Max Muncy’s three-run double in the bottom of the sixth, the bats went back to work. Michael Massey led off the seventh inning with a single, and then Kyle Isbel launched his first home run since April 22 to tie the game at 5-5.
“They threw eight innings of lefties up there,” Quatraro said. “And for Massey and [Isbel] to produce two runs there to tie the game after you're down, I mean, I'm not surprised the way these guys stay in the game. They stay in the fight every night.”
The Dodgers continued to answer, though, and retook the lead in the bottom half of the inning with a two-strike RBI single by Freddie Freeman. It was lead that the Royals couldn’t overcome, as they only brought the minimum to the plate in the final two innings.
On the mound, left-hander Noah Cameron was effective early on, but lost control of his outing in the sixth inning. He allowed a single and a double before Quatraro went to the bullpen, which led to Muncy’s bases-clearing double.
“I think just not getting that last out,” Cameron said. “Obviously I had a good inning kind of until then, striking out Mookie [Betts], a good ground ball with [Tommy] Edman. But, yeah, just obviously having to finish it. Getting behind 3-1, just not really ideal in that situation. And then obviously a good swing on a pitch that I left kind of over the plate. Just got to be better, got to get that last out.”
Cameron finished his night going 5 2/3 innings, allowing four earned runs on six hits with two walks and two strikeouts.
“We're not done with this year,” Cameron said of the team’s resilience on Monday. “We got a lot of fight, got a lot of good players, good swingers. We're just trying to obviously survive. But obviously we're trying to win and we're trying to get better every day. And I thought we did that really well tonight. Battled the whole night and obviously a good team and just got to tip your hat and move on to tomorrow.”