With the largest offensive out pour this season, the Royals gained a needed win from the Texas Rangers today, and improved their record to 12-14 (2 games shy of .500). The starting pitching did not fair as well as the bats on this day, as Brett Tomko was hit pretty hard today in his short stint on the mound.
Tomko pitched 3.1 innings, gave up 7 Hits, 5 Runs (all earned), and 3 BB’s, striking out only 3. This was not what you want to see from your starter. mlb.com : “I’m just fighting it right now,” Tomko said. “My secondary pitches are just garbage; they’re just not working.”
That says enough about the pitching. The Bullpen came in and really held off the Rangers well, no allowing another run to score. It took 4 pitchers to pitch the rest of this one, and each did an awesome job. Mahay, Gobble, Ramirez, Soria, in that order, combined for 5 and 2/3 innings of work, giving up 3 Hits total, NO Runs, 3 BB’s, and 4 K’s. Pretty impressive.
The bat of Jose Guillen sprung alive today, as he turned his 4 At-Bats into 2 Runs Scored, 2 Hits, and 5 RBI’s. This included a 4th inning dinger off of reliever Feldman, with one on for the 2 runs in that inning.
The Royals need to have a little more solid outing from the starting pitcher’s staff. As long as those bats can stay this hot, we may see these Royals at the top of our Division before to long again.