KANSAS CITY -- Three takeaways from the Royals’ 8-3 loss to the Red Sox on Tuesday night, their seventh defeat in eight games:

Sparkman did his job

For five innings, it appeared that Royals right-hander Glenn Sparkman might duplicate his previous start at Kauffman Stadium -- seven shutout innings against the Rays on May 1.

Sparkman was cruising along in the series opener against the Red Sox, tossing five scoreless innings, albeit he was surviving with good fortune. In one inning alone, the Sox hit balls with exit velocities of 107, 110 and 110 mph, and all three were outs.

• Box score

In the sixth, though, Sparkman, nursing a 2-0 lead, gave up a leadoff double to Mookie Betts on a fly to deep right-center that Whit Merrifield just missed pulling in. With one out, manager Ned Yost relieved Sparkman with right-hander Scott Barlow, who allowed his inherited runner to score plus two more as the Red Sox took a 3-2 lead.

Sparkman gave up three hits and one run over 5 1/3 innings. He walked one and struck out two. His 80 pitches were the most since that Tampa Bay game.

“He was doing a good job,” Yost said. “He was letting them put the ball in play and letting his defense make plays for him.”

That was by design, Sparkman said.

“One-hundred percent, the plan was to get pitches in the zone tonight,” Sparkman said. “Fastball command was there and I found my curveball tonight.”

Barlow’s struggles

The troubles continued for Barlow, who gave up two runs in two-thirds of an inning.

Back on May 14, Barlow had a 1.77 ERA and was becoming Yost’s most dependable fireman. Since then, Barlow has given up 12 runs over 8 2/3 innings -- a 12.34 ERA.

Barlow gave up a triple to J.D. Martinez before walking Rafael Devers. After a sacrifice fly tied the score at 2, Barlow gave up an RBI double to Brock Holt.

“Probably, they’re just catching my tendencies, throwing one pitch over and over again,” Barlow said. “I’ll just go back to the video and dig into that.

“[My location] was not as bad as the other nights. [But] it’s very frustrating. The body feels good. I feel like I”m putting in a good amount of work and not getting results.”

Added Yost, ““He had good stuff tonight. His fastball got up to 97 miles an hour. Just a couple of flat sliders.”

Cuthbert red-hot

Infielder Cheslor Cuthbert is playing like a man who doesn’t want to be sent to Triple-A again.

Cuthbert, whose contract was selected from Omaha on Friday, is now 6-for-16 (.375) with two home runs. He gave the Royals a 2-0 lead in the second when he shot an Eduardo Rodriguez cutter into the left-field bullpen with Alex Gordon on board.