Kansas City allowed 13 walks on Wednesday evening and it ended up costing the Royals in the end as they lost 5-4. Losers of five straight, Kansas City now sits at 20-22 on the season. Texas improved to 23-20.
The Rangers scored twice in the top of the 11th inning facing Royals reliever Jeremy Jeffress. Adrian Beltre singled to score two runs breaking what was a 3-3 tie. Jeffress' stat line showed 1/3 inning pitched, allowing two runs on one hit while walking three. Jeffress was marked with the loss and fell to 1-1. For the hard-throwing Royals reliever it boiled down to the inability to throw strikes as just 10 of his 23 were strikes.
Brayan Pena singled to score Wilson Betemit in the bottom half of the inning as the Royals tried to rally with two outs. It was not meant to be as Mark Lowe struck out Chris Getz looking to end the game. Arthur Rhodes picked up the win evening his record at 2-2, with Lowe earning his first save of the year.
Danny Duffy made his major league debut for the Royals for the Royals throwing 94 pitches over four innings. The rookie southpaw allowed two runs on four hits. He walked six and struck out four. It can be considered a mixed review, but there was also a lot of promise in that you could see why he progressed through the minors as he did.
Obviously Duffy's pitch count was too high and he wasn't able to pitch into the middle innings, but he also displayed good movement on his pitches and utilized his fastball to work four strikeouts. Obviously his adrenaline was running high and at times it caused him to throw harder than he needed to, causing him to miss the zone enough to walk the six batters. All said those are things that can very much be improved upon.
The Rangers took a 3-2 lead in the top of the ninth as pinch-hitter Elvis Andrus singled, scoring Craig Gentry. Gentry had walked against Royals closer Joakim Soria. However, Kansas City came back to tie it up in the ninth against Texas' closer Neftali Feliz. Eric Hosmer went deep to right field, for his first home run at Kauffman Stadium to tie the game.
Blake Wood worked out of a jam in the top of the tenth, before Kansas City loaded the bases in the tenth with two outs. Hosmer once again came to the plate, this time flying out to right field to keep the game going.
Kansas City has walked 13 or more batters just seven times in their history, and are 0-7 in those games. Not very surprising. The boxscore from Wednesday evening can be viewed here.