The Royals scored one more run than the Marlins today, beating them by a score of 7-6. Tomko won his second of the year and drove Kansas City’s winning streak to 5. He pitched 7 innings of very good ball, only giving up 2 runs, on 5 hits, striking out 4. It was the bullpen today that gave the club a scare. After Tomko left in the 7th, it took a total of 5 pitchers to get this one in the books. Soria saw his first runs scored against him in the 9th, giving up a 2 run home run to Hermida, bringing the Marlins within 1 run before he closed it out getting his 11th save of the year.
The offense was again ready to go right out of the gate, scoring 2 runs in the 1st inning. The whole team seemed to help out in one way or another, and they seemed to hit any pitcher that this Florida team threw at them.
Coming off a sweep of Detroit, at home, it would not have been shocking to see the Royals falter a little bit today, after the travel, and the high of the sweep, but they did not. This win brought them within 1.5 games of division leader Cleveland, and only 1 game behind both Minnesota, and Chicago. Detroit has fallen way back to 6 games out, and have distanced themselves from the Royals. They are right in this thing early on. Very exciting.
As we mentioned a week or so ago, a nice little win streak could change things in this division tremendously, and that is exactly what has happened. With a couple more key wins, the Royals could regain the lead, and give the central a 4 dog race, excluding the surprisingly bad Detroit Tigers.