{"id":68790,"date":"2025-05-31T13:23:31","date_gmt":"2025-05-31T13:23:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/68790\/"},"modified":"2025-05-31T13:23:31","modified_gmt":"2025-05-31T13:23:31","slug":"kansas-city-royals-beat-cleveland-guardians-for-first-2025-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/68790\/","title":{"rendered":"Kansas City Royals beat Cleveland Guardians for first 2025 win"},"content":{"rendered":"

KANSAS CITY, Mo. \u2014 After dropping the Opening Day game<\/a> on Thursday, the Royals are now 1-1 after beating Cleveland 4-3 in game two of their three-game series at Kauffman Stadium.<\/p>\n

The game was full of exciting moments on both sides of the ball, with big hits from Salvador Perez, Bobby Witt Jr. and Maikel Garcia, as well as some stellar catches in the outfield and good bullpen action.<\/p>\n

Batting<\/p>\n

On offense, the Royals were stalled for the first four innings, and didn\u2019t take the lead until the seventh inning. However, that didn\u2019t mean they weren\u2019t putting together good at-bats.<\/p>\n

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Jonathan India got his first hit in Royal blue today in the first inning and was filling counts all day. It was a relieving sign for fans after the new addition went 0-5 on Thursday.<\/p>\n

\u2018This is our year\u2019: Fans hopeful for another KC Royals run <\/a><\/p>\n

Salvador Perez carried the offense for the game\u2019s first stages with a couple of RBI singles to keep the Royals within striking distance. Bobby Witt Jr. also knocked in a go-ahead run with a double into the left field corner.<\/p>\n

However, Maikel Garcia was the player of the game. He smashed a hard liner into the left field foul pole to tie the game in the seventh, which set up Witt Jr.\u2019s go-ahead double. Garcia smoked another ball in the eighth for a single as well.<\/p>\n

Defense<\/p>\n

The corner outfield positions were also an eye-opener for fans today. India made his first start at LF, and MJ Melendez handled right field. Both of them made some stellar catches in the vast Kauffman lawn.<\/p>\n

Pitching<\/p>\n

Seth Lugo was on the mound for the Royals. He pitched five innings, giving up three runs, three walks and one home run with four strikeouts. A decent outing, but Lugo will look to get deeper into games in the future, and that means keeping runs off the board.<\/p>\n

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The bullpen absolutely stifled the Guardians, though. Daniel Lynch IV got the win out of the pen, he threw two innings, giving up no hits and no walks with no strikeouts.<\/p>\n

Royals Hall of Fame director speaks on upcoming anniversaries <\/a><\/p>\n

Lucas Erceg and Carlos Estevez also pitched an inning apiece. Neither of them gave up a run, and Estevez punched out Lane Thomas for the final out of the game. Estevez earned his first save as a Royal as well.<\/p>\n

Coming Up<\/p>\n

Now at .500, the Royals will look to improve to 2-1 tomorrow and take the series against the Guardians, who won the AL Central last year before falling to the New York Yankees in the ALCS.<\/p>\n

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We\u2019re set for a good pitching matchup tomorrow, with Michael Wacha taking on Guards\u2019 ace Tanner Bibee.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.<\/p>\n

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KANSAS CITY, Mo. \u2014 After dropping the Opening Day game on Thursday, the Royals are now 1-1 after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68791,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2387],"tags":[5,1351,1092,135,14419,2161,936,2123,55,2596,2595,3183,3540,1107,2162,5169,8532,4,62,252,373,2002,777,2122],"class_list":{"0":"post-68790","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-kansas-city-royals","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-bobby-witt-jr","10":"tag-carlos-estevez","11":"tag-cleveland","12":"tag-daniel-lynch-iv","13":"tag-jonathan-india","14":"tag-kansas","15":"tag-kansas-city","16":"tag-kansas-city-royals","17":"tag-kansascity","18":"tag-kansascityroyals","19":"tag-kauffman-stadium","20":"tag-lane-thomas","21":"tag-lucas-erceg","22":"tag-maikel-garcia","23":"tag-michael-wacha","24":"tag-mj-melendez","25":"tag-mlb","26":"tag-new-york-yankees","27":"tag-royals","28":"tag-salvador-perez","29":"tag-seth-lugo","30":"tag-tanner-bibee","31":"tag-the-royals"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114602665862462706","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68790","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=68790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68790\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}