ST. LOUIS -- Friday night was just the second time Michael Wacha has pitched at Busch Stadium since departing the Cardinals, his first organization, in free agency following the 2019 season. The leaderboard of most impressive career lines at this ballpark is littered with his name at the very top despite his absence in recent years, and if his performance in the series opener is any indication, that absence has made the heart grow fonder -- and arguably more effective.
Despite all the time Wacha bought the Royals on Friday night, mustering the offense remained outside his control, and Kansas City dropped its fifth straight game, 5-4, in 11 innings. The Royals scored their tiebreaking run in the top of the 10th on Bobby Witt Jr.’s RBI double, but none further, allowing the Cardinals to tie it up in the bottom of the 10th and walk it off an inning later.
“It’s disappointing to lose,” said Royals manager Matt Quatraro. “Whether it was the 10th, 11th, whatever, we lost the game. Guys played their hearts out and came up a run short, so it really stinks.”
Battling through a second-inning line drive that left Jordan Walker’s bat at 107.5 miles per hour and clipped him on the ankle, Wacha posted six strong innings and turned in his third consecutive quality start. It was his seventh in nine starts this season, composed of five strikeouts and just one walk. Those five strikeouts took Wacha past Jaime García for fifth place in strikeouts all-time at the current Busch Stadium with 411.
“Adrenaline kind of carried me through that one,” Wacha said of the wayward liner.
“There’s some positives, and there’s some stuff that [I’ve] got to get better,” he acknowledged. “A couple pitches that I’d like to have back there. We took the lead, and then kind of gave it right back to them there.”
The Royals loaded the bases in both the fourth and sixth innings against St. Louis starter Dustin May, squeezing out three runs through solid situational hitting. Vinnie Pasquantino walked and scored in each of those innings, and Isaac Collins recorded a RBI in each without notching a hit in either -- a sac fly in the fourth and a groundout to first in the sixth.
Carter Jensen (double, single) and Jac Caglianone (walk, single) also reached in the midst of both rallies, with Jensen’s double driving in Pasquantino for the first run of the game.
It was in the fourth that the Cardinals offered an immediate answer, with Walker lifting an 0-2 changeup from Wacha just beyond Kyle Isbel’s reach over the wall in center. They would not lead again until Witt’s double in the 10th, but that lead lasted only one pitch into the bottom of the inning when Alec Burleson tagged Lucas Erceg for a game-tying single.
In four separate innings -- the fourth, sixth, 10th and 11th -- the Royals left two runners on base. That is a demonstration of an offense that’s doing enough to generate opportunities, but not one that has come up with the clutch hit at the right time.
The Royals have not scored more than five runs in a game since May 4, compounding the frustration at the plate on a night when their starter gave them every opportunity to seize the game.
“Any time we’re scoring runs, I feel like that’s how our offense clicks,” Witt said. “We’ve just got to get back to doing that and playing good baseball.”
“There were good at-bats to get pressure on them and load the bases,” Quatraro added. “Unfortunately, we didn’t put up the crooked number. Isaac [Collins] with the sac fly, got the ball in play with the other ground-ball RBI. He had two of the four RBIs we had, so good for him, but just unfortunate that we didn’t cash more.”
Wacha, whom Quatraro called “a stabilizer” before the game, managed to avoid the loss in the extra-inning decision, remaining 4-0 against the team which drafted him 19th overall in 2012.
“We’re trying to win games here,” Wacha said. “This one definitely stinks, for sure, but hey, we’ll be back out there tomorrow. We need to compete and [get] ready to even up this series.”