the Royals a 1-0 win<\/a>, they had done exactly that: tied a big league record by using nine total pitchers in a shutout.<\/p>\nThe only other club to use that many in a shutout was Cleveland, which also did it in a 10-inning game in 2016.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot only did they pitch incredibly well today,\u201d Quatraro said, \u201cbut they had a huge workload these last four or five days. I can\u2019t credit them enough, and keeping in the right frame of mind down there, and just the plan these guys had to execute.\u201d<\/p>\n
The nine Royals pitchers combined to allow five hits and one walk while striking out 10.<\/p>\n
Long finished off \u2014 he of the 7.40 ERA this season \u2014 to earn the victory. It came 2 hours, 38 minutes after fellow reliever Angel Zerpa, pitching on no rest, breezed through the first inning and into the second to set the tone.<\/p>\n
Jonathan Bowlan was the only Royals reliever to retire more than three batters, going two full innings. John Schreiber struck out the side in the fourth. Hunter Harvey escaped a two-on, no-out jam in the sixth. And the two primary Kansas City closers, Lucas Erceg and Carlos Est\u00e9vez, made some important pitches and plays in the late innings.<\/p>\n
Erceg allowed a pinch-hit single to Drake Baldwin with one out in the eighth, then watched pinch runner Luke Williams swipe second base. But he bounced back to retire Jurickson Profar and Matt Olson and keep the game scoreless.<\/p>\n
Est\u00e9vez managed to snare a liner by Michael Harris II that appeared destined for a one-out single in the ninth.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m glad he caught it,\u201d Quatraro said. \u201cYou\u2019re going to throw a shutout, you need some good defense behind you.\u201d<\/p>\n
They certainly needed them the way Joey Wentz was pitching for the other side.<\/p>\n
Wentz, who was claimed off waivers by the Braves earlier this month, allowed one hit and three walks over 6 2\/3 innings with seven strikeouts in a return home. Wentz was born in Lawrence, Kansas, and played at Shawnee Mission East High School in the Kansas City suburb of Prairie Village, where had one of the best prep baseball careers in Kansas history.<\/p>\n
The Braves drafted Wentz in the first round in 2016, but he has largely failed to live up to expectations. He has bounced around several clubs, including Pittsburgh and Minnesota this year, and had a 5.76 ERA heading into his fourth start for Atlanta.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe never could solve him,\u201d Quatraro said.<\/p>\n
Yet they didn\u2019t need to the way the Kansas City bullpen was performing.<\/p>\n
The Royals had the luxury of relying on their relievers with a day off Thursday before their series this weekend in Toronto. And they needed to rely on them with injuries beginning to take their toll on their starting rotation.<\/p>\n
Cole Ragans, an All-Star last year, has been on the injured list with a left rotator cuff strain, and Michael Lorenzen recently joined him with a left oblique strain. Then on Monday, the Royals announced that All-Star left-hander Kris Bubic would be placed on the IL with his own rotator cuff injury, one likely to end his season.<\/p>\n
So, it fell upon a Royals bullpen that wound up with only one player \u2014 Thomas Hatch \u2014 still available by the time Perez singled off Daysbel Hern\u00e1ndez in the 10th inning to give Kansas City the victory.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t easy. There was danger at times there,\u201d Quatraro said. \u201cBut you go backwards and see what Sammy did there, and to really execute \u2014 that was enormous. But even more so than the 10 shutout innings, the workload they have had and they way they responded, especially a day game after a night game.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP MLB: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/mlb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) \u2014 With a rash of injuries to his starting rotation, Royals manager Matt Quatraro…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":216948,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2387],"tags":[28235,3287,46,5,1092,230,652,2295,3329,4156,1710,7096,13041,813,936,2123,55,2596,2595,309,7093,1107,7485,541,2602,661,371,3736,8532,4,256,7094,252,373,4162,185,20316],"class_list":{"0":"post-216947","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-kansas-city-royals","8":"tag-angel-zerpa","9":"tag-athlete-injuries","10":"tag-atlanta-braves","11":"tag-baseball","12":"tag-carlos-estevez","13":"tag-cole-ragans","14":"tag-ga-state-wire","15":"tag-georgia","16":"tag-high-school-baseball","17":"tag-hunter-harvey","18":"tag-joey-wentz","19":"tag-john-schreiber","20":"tag-jonathan-bowlan","21":"tag-jurickson-profar","22":"tag-kansas","23":"tag-kansas-city","24":"tag-kansas-city-royals","25":"tag-kansascity","26":"tag-kansascityroyals","27":"tag-kris-bubic","28":"tag-ks-state-wire","29":"tag-lucas-erceg","30":"tag-luke-williams","31":"tag-matt-olson","32":"tag-matt-quatraro","33":"tag-michael-harris-ii","34":"tag-michael-lorenzen","35":"tag-missouri","36":"tag-mj-melendez","37":"tag-mlb","38":"tag-mlb-baseball","39":"tag-mo-state-wire","40":"tag-royals","41":"tag-salvador-perez","42":"tag-sam-long","43":"tag-sports","44":"tag-thomas-hatch"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}