Meltdown in H-Town
Setup man faces seven batters, allows six runs and two homers
The Royals exploit Luke Gregerson for a 6-run 8th.
Luke Gregerson stood next to the mound with his hands on his hips, his eyes fixed on the rightcenter field section of Minute Maid Park where one of his sliders had just disappeared.
His eighth inning had quickly unraveled into a disaster, with Eric Hosmer’s two-run homer serving as the crushing blow.
The nightmarish inning doomed the Astros in their 7-3 loss to the Kansas City Royals on Saturday night. Gregerson, a righthander and the Astros’ primary setup man, faced seven betters and allowed six runs.
The lone out he recorded came on a sacrifice bunt by the Royals’ No. 9 hitter. Hosmer and Salvador Perez homered in back-to-back at-bats to end his evening.
The defeat was the Astros’ third consecutive, evening their record at 3-3 and ensuring them their first series loss of the young season.
Gregerson’s meltdown wasted an excellent start by Dallas Keuchel, who for the second time in six days looked like his vintage 2015 self.
For Gregerson, a former closer and usually reliable eighthinning man, the outing was the worst of his nine-year career.
Only once in his previous 561 regular-season relief appearances had he allowed even four runs and in that outing, with the San Diego Padres in September 2009, he recorded two outs. Walk to leadoff man
Saturday’s eighth inning began inauspiciously for the 32-year-old reliever. After jumping ahead of Alcides Escobar, one ball and two strikes, Gregerson missed on three straight pitches to a free swinger who seldom waits out a walk.
Mike Moustakas came off the bench to pinch-hit and promptly smacked a single into left field. He was replaced by a pinchrunner.
After Drew Butera sacrificed those two runners into scoring position, Alex Gordon ripped a double over George Springer’s head in right field that turned a one-run Astros lead into a onerun Astros deficit.
Lorenzo Cain followed with a bloop single into shallow right field to make it 4-2.
Then came Hosmer, who just last month was Gregerson’s teammate in the U.S. gold medal-winning run through the World Baseball Classic.
The lefthanded-hitting first baseman looked at a slider for ball one before crushing the next pitch over the fence in rightcenter field. Consecutive blasts
As Hosmer rounded the bases, Gregerson stared for a moment out toward where the ball had just landed. He then grabbed a new one and turned his attention to the next batter, Salvador Perez, who two pitches later lined a sinker into the Crawford Boxes.
“It happened fast,” said Astros manager A.J. Hinch, who hadn’t reached the mound by the time Gregerson handed him the baseball following Perez’s homer. “He didn’t say much on the bench obviously, but the results are what they are. Just a bad night for him.”
Gregerson didn’t say much after the game, either, evading the media by leaving the clubhouse before it opened to reporters.
Before the Royals teed off on Gregerson, they were held in check for seven innings by Keuchel.
The bearded lefthander allowed only two hits, both to Cheslor Cuthbert, the second a laser into the Crawford Boxes for the only run against the Astros’ top starter through his first 14 innings of the season.
“I’ve been feeling pretty good,” Keuchel said, “so I was just trying to ride the high of the last start into this start.”
Registering 15 of his outs on ground balls and four on strikeouts, Keuchel was backed by Brian McCann’s solo home run off Royals lefthander Danny Duffy and a run-scoring single by Marwin Gonzalez.
Keuchel had thrown 93 pitches by the end of the seventh inning, his most since his final start of last year before he was shut down with shoulder inflammation. Hinch’s plan goes awry
With Gregerson and closer Ken Giles rested after not pitching Friday, it was lined up exactly how Hinch wanted it.
When asked whether he considered sending Keuchel back out for the eighth, Hinch responded: “Not really. It’s early in the season. He’s coming off of a high-volume spring.
“It’s easy to say that after the fact. There are going to be days where you push him. But having Luke on a day’s rest, having Giles on the back end sort of mapped out exactly how we would’ve wanted.”
The Royals had three consecutive righthanded batters set to bat at the start of the eighth, but the lefthanded Moustakas was ready off the bench.
Gregerson had pitched scoreless innings in each of his first three appearances this season.
“It’s unfortunate for our team that we weren’t able to close out a close win, but in the world of decision-making I was trying to make the best decision for Dallas and our team,” Hinch said. “We had everything lined up the way we wanted. It just didn’t work.”