Lugo dominates, offense sacrifices in 2-0 win against Astros
Royals played some extreme small ball to get the victory.
Well, that was quick.
The Royals take a 2-0 victory in a game that came in just under two hours at 1 hour 58 minutes, Seth Lugo tossed eight scoreless innings on only 94 pitches. Heck, he had a no-hitter through 3 2⁄3 innings. The Astros never reached third base. Not even once! Lugo allowed three hits and one walk, but they were so spread out that the Astros never even had more than 1 dude on base at any time. Lugo finished with eight strikeouts. MLB Savant says he threw 10 different pitch types, but he really made use of high fastballs to get strikeouts. A kitchen sink game from Lugo! A ridiculous performance! Bravo!
Lucas Erceg came in for the ninth and continued Lugo’s dominance to finish up the blistering fast game of baseball.
For a game THIS fast, that means the Royals offense couldn’t do much damage either. Else the game would have been longer. They scattered nine hits across the game and managed to scratch across two runs in basically the same way each time.
In the fifth inning, Drew Waters hit a double and advanced to third on a Freddy Fermin sacrifice bunt. With Waters on third, Kyle Isbel managed to golf a low curveball just far enough into right field to get Waters home on a sacrifice fly.
Making use of the sacrifice bunt again the next inning, Michael Massey moved both Vinnie Pasquantino and Maikel Garcia to third and second, respectively. Hunter Renfroe hit a long fly ball to center field that was very much deep enough to score Pasquantino with no trouble.
The Royals improve to 13-14. The Astros fall to 13-12.
These two teams will go at it again tomorrow at 6:10pm central time. You can watch on FanDuel Sports Network Kansas City or FS1. You can listen on Royals Radio Network.