CINCINNATI (AP) \u2014 Lane Thomas hit a grand slam in the first inning and Luinder Avila pitched a career-high five innings as the Kansas City Royals snapped a six-game skid with a 9-2 win over the Cincinnati Reds on Monday night.<\/p>\n
Kansas City (23-37) won for just the fourth time in 20 games.<\/p>\n
Avila (1-2) made his second career start and allowed one run on two hits with four walks and a career-high five strikeouts on 86 pitches, also a career high. Avila is replacing left-hander Kris Bubic, who is sidelined with arm issues.<\/p>\n
Jac Caglianone hit a two-run home run, his sixth of the season, in the fifth and Michael Massey added a solo homer in the seventh, both off Reds lefty Brandon Leibrandt.<\/p>\n
Leibrandt gave the Reds\u2019 injury-riddled bullpen a boost by pitching six innings, allowing five earned runs on 10 hits.<\/p>\n
Reds right-hander Lyon Richardson (0-1) made his fifth career start after Chase Burns, who has a 1.96 ERA in 11 starts, was scratched due to illness. Richardson lasted one inning, issuing two walks and hitting a batter before allowing Thomas\u2019 third career grand slam that gave the Royals a 4-0 lead.<\/p>\n
It was Thomas\u2019 second home run of the season and first since April 26. He went 3 for 5 with a homer, double, and four RBIs.<\/p>\n
Reds left fielder JJ Bleday hit a solo home run, his 10th of the season and third in four games, in the first inning to make the score 4-1. It was just the second homer allowed by Avila this season through 36 innings.<\/p>\n
Highly rated infield prospect Edwin Arroyo made his major-league debut at second base for Cincinnati and singled in the ninth inning for his first career hit. He went 1 for 4 and made one fine defensive play. The 22-yeare-old was recalled from Triple-A earlier Monday when Elly De La Cruz was placed on the 10-day injured list with a right hamstring strain.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
Royals LHP Noah Cameron (2-4, 4.61) will oppose Reds LHP Andrew Abbott (4-3, 3.88) on Tuesday night.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CINCINNATI (AP) \u2014 Lane Thomas hit a grand slam in the first inning and Luinder Avila pitched a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":715182,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2387],"tags":[5,231,936,2123,55,2596,2595,3540,40028,2128,4,252],"class_list":["post-715181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-kansas-city-royals","tag-baseball","tag-jac-caglianone","tag-kansas","tag-kansas-city","tag-kansas-city-royals","tag-kansascity","tag-kansascityroyals","tag-lane-thomas","tag-luinder-avila","tag-michael-massey","tag-mlb","tag-royals"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116679286694358424","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715181","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=715181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/715182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=715181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=715181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=715181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}