KANSAS CITY -- A shift in the pitching plans for Tuesday’s game against the Guardians hardly changed anything at all for the Royals as they turned to Stephen Kolek, the next man up in the rotation, and just kept rolling along in the win column.
Kolek tossed a quality spot start with three runs allowed in six innings, and the Royals’ offense found timely home runs from Michael Massey and Isaac Collins in their 5-3 win over the Guardians at Kauffman Stadium.
With their fifth consecutive win, the Royals have yet to lose in May, and in 13 games since they snapped that dreadful eight-game losing streak on April 21, the Royals are 10-3.
“We’re just learning from what happened in the first month, [which] obviously didn’t go very well for us,” said Collins, who was 3-for-3 on Tuesday with a big insurance homer in the sixth, ending his night a triple away from the cycle. “There are a lot of things that we just couldn’t string together. The fact that we’re learning from all that, and building and making adjustments just shows what type of team we have and what we’re capable of.”
As Noah Cameron deals with low back tightness that scratched him from Tuesday’s start, the Royals called on their depth in Kolek, who had been sidelined since late February with a left oblique strain but had made four rehab starts with Triple-A Omaha over the past month. It was finally time for his season debut Tuesday, and he was pretty much exactly as the Royals remembered him from last year, when he posted a 1.91 ERA in five starts after being acquired from the Padres at the Trade Deadline.
“It’s great to be back and good to help the team any way I can,” Kolek said. “... The rehab process was great, and it's been really smooth. They say that obliques can linger quite a bit and be tricky to navigate, but I feel like we've done a great job of staying healthy and progressing each week.”
Kolek was efficient and reliant on contact, trusting the defense behind him across his six innings. The only sore spot on Kolek’s night was the three-run home run Rhys Hoskins hit in the fourth inning to give the Guardians a brief lead. But Kolek didn’t let that rattle him, shutting down the final eight batters he faced after the homer.
The Royals didn’t let the brief deficit rattle them either, a theme that keeps reappearing during this run they’re on right now. They had jumped out to a 2-0 lead on Salvador Perez’s two-run single in the first inning, and Massey’s two-run home run in the fourth gave them that lead right back after Hoskins' homer off Kolek.
“You could feel the confidence in the team the moment we went down,” Kolek said. “It was like, ‘All right, we’re going to punch back and get back in this.’ For Massey to go out and deliver that, you could feel a huge swing of energy back in the dugout.”
One run is not a huge deficit to overcome, and the fourth inning was still relatively early in the game. So the Royals never felt out of it, especially with the way they’ve been playing lately.
“We’ve all been swinging the bat pretty well, and we’ve been putting up runs lately,” Collins said. “Never really felt like the air was taken out of the dugout. To get those runs back immediately -- that was huge.”
Kansas City has overcome a deficit in four consecutive games now and six of its past seven wins over a nine-game span -- dating back to April 26, when the Royals erased a 6-0 deficit to mark a wild comeback against the Angels in 10 innings. You never know in the moment how those games can change a season, but it sure felt like a turning point in this Royals season.
Massey even referenced it Tuesday, when he was asked where the comeback mentality stems from in the clubhouse. Seth Lugo started that game on April 26 and gave up six runs in the first two innings. He still pitched into the seventh, which did not go unnoticed by his teammates.
“We talked about it after the game,” Massey said. “That’s not something you see a lot. You don’t see a lot of guys give up six runs and go seven innings. It’s just the character of the guys in this locker room. … [manager Matt Quatraro] does a great job setting the tone with that. And then you got Sal and Bob [Witt Jr.] and some of our leaders that really embody that.
“... You play nine innings, 27 outs for a reason.”