Chen Moves to 3-0 As Royals Top Indians at LinesMaker

Chen Moves to 3–0 As Royals Top Indians

KANSAS CITY, Mo. —The bullpen phone quit work­ing at just the wrong time. The bat boy unwit­tingly caused a power hit­ter to lay down a bunt in an RBI situation.

Then in a shaky ninth inning they had an error, a hit bats­man and a bases-loaded walk.

“And still we won a ball­game,” Kansas City man­ager Ned Yost exclaimed Tues­day night after the Roy­als held on for a wild 5–4 vic­tory over Cleveland.

The long-woeful and per­haps lucky Roy­als crept to within one game of the sur­pris­ing Indi­ans in the AL Cen­tral with the help of Bruce Chen’s strong pitch­ing and Alex Gordon’s strong everything.

Chen (3–0) went seven innings and beat the Indi­ans for the fourth straight time, stretch­ing his per­sonal win­ning streak, dat­ing to last sea­son, to seven games over 11 starts. Jean­mar Gomez (0–1), mak­ing his first major league start after being called up from Triple-A Colum­bus ear­lier in the day, took the loss on a night when the wind chill hov­ered near 30 degrees.

Gor­don stole two bases, scored a run, had two hits, threw out a run­ner at the plate and made a ter­rific div­ing catch in left field of Grady Sizemore’s sink­ing liner in the ninth.

“Gor­don pretty much saved the game on that very nice play on Size­more down the left-field line,” said Cleve­land man­ager Manny Acta.

Chen cruised into the sev­enth with a two-hitter and a 5–0 lead, and hadn’t allowed an earned run in 20 innings. But then his stuff flat­tened out and things got strange.

After Orlando Cabr­era sin­gled for the first hit of the inning, Yost grabbed the bullpen phone to tell Blake Wood to get ready.

“But the phones went on the blink,” said Yost. “So we had no com­mu­ni­ca­tion to our bullpen.”

A tired Chen kept throw­ing. The ener­gized Indi­ans kept hit­ting. Austin Kearns sin­gled. Lou Mar­son hit a two-run double.

“Bruce gives up another hit and we’re try­ing to get Woody up and we can’t,” said Yost.

Finally, it was Kansas City’s finest to the res­cue. The uni­formed police offi­cer near the Roy­als dugout used his hand-held com­mu­ni­ca­tion device to call the offi­cer in the bullpen and tell him to tell Wood to get ready.

“It was kind of a (mess) there for a lit­tle while but we got it straight­ened out,” Yost said. “Don’t ask me why or how or what, but every once in a while the phones shut off.”

In the KC eighth with a run­ner on base and nobody out, Kila Ka’aihue laid down a bunt that prob­a­bly puz­zled every fan in the stands.

Turns out the bat boy ran between Yost and third base coach Eddie Rodriguez just as Yost was going through his signs.

“Eddie was blocked out and thought I put the bunt sign on and I never put the bunt sign on,” said Yost. “That was a mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Eddie thought I’d put the bunt on and I never did. That’s not a sit­u­a­tion we want Kila bunting in.”

Ka’aihue, to his credit, did get the sac­ri­fice bunt down. But the run­ner was stranded and the Roy­als had to sweat the ninth when Joakim Soria got his fifth save in six oppor­tu­ni­ties even though the Indi­ans loaded the bases with two outs on a sin­gle, third base­man Wil­son Betemit’s throw­ing error and a hit bats­man. Shin-Soo Choo drew a walk that forced in a run.

But then Soria threw three straight called strikes to Car­los San­tana to end it.

“He’s a very good hit­ter and he was fac­ing a good pitcher,” said Acta. “Soria made three pitches there right on the black. I think every­body wants him to swing the bat, but you also have to take your hat off some­times to the pitcher.”

Gor­don threw out Mar­son try­ing to score in the sev­enth on Michael Brantley’s single.

Chen went seven innings and allowed two runs on six hits, with three walks and five strikeouts.

Gor­don sin­gled in the first and had an RBI dou­ble in the fifth. Since going 0 for 5 on open­ing day, he’s 26 for 67 (.388) and has extended his hit­ting streak to a career-best 13 games..

Right behind Gor­don is third base­man Betemit, who grounded a sin­gle up the mid­dle lead­ing off the fourth inning and stretched his hit­ting streak to a career-high 11 games.

Alcides Esco­bar sin­gled in the third and came home on a triple by Chris Getz, who scored on Melky Cabrera’s grounder. Escobar’s RBI sin­gle made it 3–0 off Gomez in the fourth, then back-to-back dou­bles by Cabr­era and Gor­don in the fifth were fol­lowed by Jeff Francoeur’s RBI single.

Gomez went 4 1–3 innings and gave up five runs on nine hits, with two walks and three strikeouts.

San­tana had an RBI sin­gle off Blake Wood in the eighth. Brant­ley had three hits for the Indians.

Notes: Grady Size­more, 5 for 9 with two dou­bles, two RBIs and a home run in two games since return­ing from knee surgery, got the night off until pinch-hitting with one out in the ninth. Early in sea­son, Indi­ans man­ager Manny Acta plans to let him play three or four games every five days or so. … The loss kept the first-place Indi­ans from going to 13–4 for the first time since 1988. … The Roy­als and Indi­ans came into the game ranked 1–2 in the AL in hitting.

Related Posts:

• Roy­als, Chen Agree to Two-Year Deal
• Mariners Closer Aardsma to Begin Rehab
• MLB Bet­ting Favorite Kansas City Over­whelms Seattle
• Votto, Rolen Ral­lies Cincin­nati to Beat Brewers
• Indi­ans Sign Out­fielder Felix Pie to Minor League Contract

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