Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Noah Cameron was rolling and got pulled early, and the Royals would end up losing the game. Well, I bet you’ve heard that multiple times now, because manager Matt Quatraro has made that mistake three times now.
In fact, in those three instances, Cameron has been pulled from three games with under 85 pitches, in which he has thrown less than 85 pitches, over 17 2⁄3 innings, allowing just a single run. The Royals have ended up losing all three of those contests.
It felt eerily similar to the first game of the doubleheader in St. Louis where Cameron had thrown 6 scoreless innings, and the Royals led 3-0.
Today it was 5 scoreless innings and a 2-0 lead. Cameron had struck out 7 batters, walked one and allowed just four hits. He was at just 83 pitches. And just like what happened in St. Louis, it was John Schreiber who blew it. He promptly gave up a leadoff single and a batter later a long game tying 2 run home run.
Angel Zerpa and Lucas Erceg would keep it knotted at 2 up until the 9th. Closer Carlos Estevez gave up a leadoff homer to rookie Nick Kurtz. And that was that the Royals got swept at home.. again. An 0-6 homestand, three of those losses coming against one of the worst teams in the American league. They’ve lost 15 of their last 21, 8 of their last 10, and 10 of their last 12 HOME games. In fact, they have lost 7 straight games at home, they haven’t won a game in the month of June at home.
Oh yeah, they had a players only meeting yesterday after the game, that didn’t seem to have any effect. They are now 4 games under .500 and spiraling even further. The rest of the month they play good or great teams. They are 19-19 at home and are 3-10 in the month of June already.
I’m sorry I can’t put a positive spin on anything right now, I was planning out putting an article out tomorrow, plotting the Royals path to a Wild Card spot this season, but I was banking on them sweeping the lowly Athletics, I didn’t expect them to be swept. The only real positive from today was Noah Cameron was awesome again, and again the manager let the team down with his poor decision making.
They have an off day tomorrow, before a 6-game road trip. Once again, Happy Father’s Day to all those who can celebrate it!
