KANSAS CITY -- Five days ago, all that could stop Michael Fulmer was a pitch count. On Wednesday, all that could stop the balls the Royals hit off of him were the outfield walls and seats of Kauffman Stadium.
This is the conundrum the Tigers have faced all season with Fulmer, a former All-Star who looked a year ago like he could be Detroit's ace for years or the most attractive target on the trade market. After the Royals hit Fulmer for seven runs and seven extra-base hits over just 3 2/3 innings in Thursday's 9-2 Detroit defeat, Tigers officials and the flustered right-hander are left to figure things out again.
"I feel like all year, I've taken one step forward and two steps back," Fulmer said after Detroit's fifth straight loss. "I have a good game, and then I have a game like this. I think I just have to keep working on what we've been working on and try to get better next time."

Two years after winning American League Rookie of the Year honors, Fulmer fell to 3-10 with a 4.71 ERA. He's not the first Tigers ace to go through that sort of turnaround from rookie season to junior year. Between Justin Verlander's 2006 Rookie of the Year honors and his '09 emergence as one of the American League's workhorse starters, Verlander suffered a 17-loss season in '08. His 4.84 ERA that year remains the highest of his career. He struggled so much that year that future Hall of Famer Jack Morris wondered aloud if he was injured, an observation Verlander vehemently denied. The lessons Verlander learned from that season prompted him to change his workout routine and preparation.
Fulmer is healthy, he said, which is no small consolation. He missed five weeks with a left oblique strain before returning from the disabled list last weekend. Manager Ron Gardenhire and pitching coach Rick Anderson were so encouraged by his 4 2/3 scoreless innings last Friday against the White Sox that they juggled the pitching rotation so that he could settle into a routine of pitching every five days. Instead of pitching at Yankee Stadium later in the week, he got the matinee in Kansas City, a team he has held down well for his whole career.
What ensued Wednesday would've been rough anywhere. Fulmer (3-10) retired Kansas City's first five batters and was a strike away from a clean second inning when Jorge Bonifacio caught a 97-mph fastball over the plate and lined it into right-center field for a two-out single. That was the last single Fulmer allowed; everything else went for extra bases, and generally went a long way.
Or, as Gardenhire put it, "They pretty much hit everything he threw. Fastballs, they jumped on them, they blooped them, they smashed them."

Raul Mondesi's second homer in as many games, a two-run drive to right-center on a fastball at the knees, commenced the damage in the second. Alex Gordon's two-run homer to right field off a high fastball put the Royals in command in the third. Hunter Dozier's fourth-inning leadoff triple, a 110-mph line drive off the wall in left-center field off a hanging slider, opened a stretch of four extra-base hits in five batters before Gardenhire brought the hook with two outs.
"We gave him as long as we could, hoping he could get another out or two," Gardenhire said. "It just wasn't going to work out."
Fulmer was on a 90-pitch count but lasted just 71 pitches, 46 of them strikes, eight for base hits. The Royals hit five balls off him with an exit velocity of 101 mph or harder, according to Statcast™. All the damage besides Dozier's triple came off the fastball.

"I don't think my slider was the best today," Fulmer said, "but they didn't really swing at it. I think they had a game plan of just sitting on the fastball. They knew I was going to throw it eventually. I got ahead of guys. I threw a lot of strikes. I thought my stuff was OK for the most part. I can live with the mistakes I made getting hit. But it's the good pitches that I thought I made in some at-bats, and they got hit, too."
Fulmer became the first Tigers starter since Nate Robertson a decade ago to give up seven or more extra-base hits in a game.
All that early damage resulted in a relatively peaceful afternoon for Royals starter Danny Duffy (8-11), who held Detroit to two hits over six innings of one-run ball. Duffy held the Tigers hitless after Michael Mahtook singled home Jose Iglesias in the first. Mahtook added a solo homer in the ninth to continue his August tear.

INJURY REPORT
Adding injury to insult, the Tigers lost Iglesias from the game in the fourth inning after suffering what the team called a lower abdominal strain. Jim Adduci, who had been out of the lineup against the left-handed Duffy, entered the game at first base, with Niko Goodrum and Ronny Rodriguez shifting over a spot. More >

SOUND SMART
Fulmer fell to 0-4 with an 8.00 ERA in four career starts at Kauffman Stadium. He's 14-13 with a 3.79 ERA in his other 34 career road starts.
YOU GOTTA SEE THIS
JaCoby Jones made his second highlight catch in as many games since his return from the disabled list, racing into right-center field to make a diving play on Whit Merrifield's drive into the gap. The grab saved a run, preventing a baserunner ahead of Gordon's homer.

HE SAID IT
"They hit the good pitches, and they hit the bad ones." -- Fulmer
UP NEXT
Francisco Liriano (3-9, 4.82 ERA) gets the ball one more time before Friday's trade deadline for postseason roster eligibility as the Tigers open a four-game series against the Yankees on Thursday with a 7:05 p.m. ET game at Yankee Stadium. Lefty J.A. Happ (15-6, 3.80), whom the Tigers roughed up twice this season with Toronto, gets the ball for the Bronx Bombers.