KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) \u2014 Jos\u00e9 Ram\u00edrez, Chase DeLauter and Petey Halpin drew consecutive bases-loaded walks in a five-run ninth inning capped by Angel Mart\u00ednez’s two-run double, and the Cleveland Guardians beat the Kansas City Royals 12-9 Friday night to maintain a one-game lead over the Chicago White Sox in the AL Central.<\/p>\n
Cleveland (84-76) and Chicago (83-77) are both assured at least wild card berths. Each team has two games left, and the White Sox hold the division tiebreaker.<\/p>\n
Rookie Carter Jensen, who had a career-high five RBIs, tied the score 7-7 in the eighth with his second homer of the game, a two-run shot off Hunter Gaddis (6-3). Jensen has 27 homers this season.<\/p>\n
Nate Pearson (2-4) walked Nathaniel Lowe on four pitches starting the ninth and, after Travis Bazzana flied out, issued consecutive four-pitch walks to pinch-hitter Patrick Bailey and Brayan Rocchio.<\/p>\n
Steven Kwan grounded to third baseman Maikel Garcia, who threw home for a forceout, and Ram\u00edrez forced in the go-ahead run with a five-pitch walk.<\/p>\n
Nolan Hoffman relieved and walked DeLauter on five pitches and Halpin on four. Mart\u00ednez\u2019s double drove in two runs for a 12-7 lead, and Halpin was thrown out at the plate.<\/p>\n
Salvador Perez hit his 21st homer in the bottom half, a two-run drive against Matt Festa.<\/p>\n
Austin Hedges and David Fry homered for Cleveland.<\/p>\n
Guardians RHP Tanner Bibee (6-15, 4.35 ERA) and Royals RHP Michael Wacha (9-9, 3.33) start Saturday night. night.<\/p>\n
See AP\u2019s full MLB coverage here<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) \u2014 Jos\u00e9 Ram\u00edrez, Chase DeLauter and Petey Halpin drew consecutive bases-loaded walks in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":814529,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2380],"tags":[6197,6198,5,6199,138,135,51,2565,8064,538,947,865,2162,1452,5169,4,14174,878,9500,9501,7661,9496,9497,82856,83365,45904,373,2081,12569],"class_list":["post-814528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cleveland-guardians","tag-angel-martinez","tag-austin-hedges","tag-baseball","tag-brayan-rocchio","tag-chicago","tag-cleveland","tag-cleveland-guardians","tag-clevelandguardians","tag-david-fry","tag-guardians","tag-hunter-gaddis","tag-jose-ramirez","tag-maikel-garcia","tag-matt-festa","tag-michael-wacha","tag-mlb","tag-nate-lowe","tag-nate-pearson","tag-package-100024-ap-online","tag-package-100502-member-choice-sports-option","tag-patrick-bailey","tag-product-30599-ap-sports-news-s-wire-only","tag-product-32562-ap-online-other-sports-news","tag-product-40795-ap-missouri-sports-only","tag-product-40806-ap-ohio-sports-only","tag-royals-guardians-score","tag-salvador-perez","tag-steven-kwan","tag-travis-bazzana"],"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\/814528","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=814528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814528\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/814529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=814528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=814528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=814528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}