Nearly five hours of baseball. 437 total pitches. Four hits.
That's all Kansas City could accomplish on offense, but boy what a thing of beauty the first hit was. Eric Hosmer connected on a 92 mile-per-hour A. J. Burnett fastball with a full-count leading off the fourth inning for his first career home run. The towering shot landed in the second deck at Yankee Stadium.
Other than that, it wasn't very memorable for the Royals until the late innings.
Vin Mazzaro, recently called up to fill the roster spot created by Bruce Chen going on the disabled list, pitched four innings in his first start allowing two runs on six hits. His stat line didn't look as bad as it was to watch on the television. It took 94 pitches to get through just the four innings as Mazzaro allowed four walks and commonly was behind in the count.
New York plated their two runs with one each in the second and third innings as Jorge Posada had an RBI single in the second and Curtis Granderson hit his major league leading 12th home run on the season to center in this bottom half of the third.
Kansas City put some pressure on the Yankees finally in the bottom of the eighth inning when Melky Cabrera and Billy Butler walked, giving the Royals two on with two out. Wilson Betemit drove a single to right-center off David Robertson, scoring Cabrera to knot the game. Alex Gordon came in to pinch-hit against Boone Logan, but promptly fouled out to Alex Rodriguez.
Burnett went seven full innings for the Yankees giving up just Hosmer's home run. He walked five and struck out six, though he missed out on picking up a victory.. The Yankees fell to 20-14
Meanwhile the Royals bullpen was once again spot on Wednesday evening, as three pitchers combined for five innings of shut-out baseball; before we went into extras, including 1.2 by Nathan Adcock and three scoreless from Aaron Crow as well.
In the 10th inning, Jeff Francoeur doubled scoring Eric Hosmer to give the Royals a brief 3-2 lead, before New York answered against Royals closer Joakim Soria, as Granderson singled driving in Russell Martin.
Onto the 11th, where Hosmer hit a bases loaded sacrifice fly off Luis Ayala for what proved to be the game winner. Finally Kansas City put it all together, as Louis Coleman sent New York down in order to pick up his first major league save.
Kansas City moves to 19-17 overall as Soria picked up the win and improved to 3-0. Buddy Carlyle took the loss, falling to 0-1. Kansas City is now 4-3 in extra inning games.
Sean O`Sullivan is on the mound tomorrow night facing Ivan Nova of the Yankees.