Kansas City, Mo. — Before the game, Spencer Torkelson stirred up a portion of Royals Nation with his half-serious response to a Twitter photo clearly showing Kansas City’s Monday night starter Jordan Lyles with a strip of sticky stuff on his left wrist.
“He’s 1-11,” he snarked, referencing Lyle’s won-loss record. “You can have it. Take it.”
That got a rise out of them, for sure, and he kept the needle in once the game started.
Torkelson blasted two home runs and knocked in five runs, nearly bailing the Tigers out of a five-run hole.
Nearly. The Royals got the last laugh in this one, outslugging the Tigers 11-10 Tuesday at Kauffman Stadium.
“It feels good but at the end of the day we came out with the loss,” said Torkelson, who ended up with 10 total bases on the night. “It leaves a tough taste in your mouth.”
Torkelson launched a sinker off lefty Daniel Lynch 430 feet to the fountains beyond the left-center field wall, a two-run homer in the first inning. That ball left his bat with an exit velocity of 110 mph.
Then in the fifth, in answer to the Royals’ five-run uprising in the bottom of the fourth, he lofted a 1-2 knuckle curveball from Lynch on a high arc, just clearing the wall in left. That three-run blast put the Tigers back into the game 7-5.
BOX SCORE: Royals 11, Tigers 10
The Tigers’ though couldn’t stop the bleeding. The Royals, led by a four-hit, three-RBI night by No. 9 hitter Dairon Blanco, just kept scoring. After KO’ing starter Tarik Skubal with a five-run fourth, they tacked on two more against reliever Beau Brieske in the sixth and two more off Brendan White in the eighth.
The hill ended up being just one-run too steep to climb.
“We’re going to play the whole game, these guys have demonstrated that,” manager AJ Hinch said. “They had their back-end guy in there and it wasn’t looking too good. But those tack-on runs really matter. But we hung in there.”
The Royals have lost a Major League-most 33 games in which they’ve had a lead. And the Tigers chipped and chipped and chipped at closer Scott Barlow in the ninth. Down 11-6, Jake Rogers and Javier Báez poked RBI singles. Nick Maton walked, forcing in a run to cut it to 11-9.
But as Barlow exceeded 30 pitches, Akil Baddoo grounded into a run-scoring fielder’s choice and with the tying run at third and two outs, Riley Greene lined out to center.
“We had the right guy up at the end,” Hinch said. “We had a chance for a big swing. We came up one run short.”
It was a big night for Torkelson, who now leads the team with 14 home runs and 51 RBI. And it was a big night for Báez.
Fresh off a one-day reset, he started his day with a stellar diving play and quick throw to take a hit away from MJ Melendez. From there he went on to single, walk, double, steal two bases and aggressively score the Tigers’ sixth run tagging on a shallow line out to left by Baddoo in the sixth inning.
“Javy was locked in,” Hinch said. “He’s as accountable as any guy we have in there. He knows he needs to do better. Tonight he did everything we asked.”
It was a curious outing for Skubal. It was his third start back after his return from flexor tendon surgery. He’d pitched two scoreless, four-inning stints in his first two. He hadn’t given up an earned run since before the surgery, five straight outs without allowing an earned run dating to July 21, 2022.
And the way he started Tuesday, it didn’t look like he would give up any runs again.
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He set down six straight, striking out three of them. He breezed through the first two innings in 20 pitches (16 strikes). He was bullying Royals’ hitters with 97-mph four-seam and two-seam fastballs.
But things changed for Skubal starting in the third inning. He got clipped for two quick runs and then got buried in a 34-pitch, five-run, six-hit avalanche in the fourth inning. He only retired two batters in the inning. The first out was recorded at third base by catcher Jake Rogers, who picked off Melendez.
“I wasted an opportunity for our team to win,” Skubal said. “I didn’t do a good job limiting damage when the damage was done and I didn’t put our team in position to win, especially with the runs we scored. I’m pretty frustrated and disappointed in myself.”
The Royals hit everything Skubal threw up there. By the middle of the fourth, his velocity was down and he was struggling to command his pitches.
“They laid off some pretty good secondary pitches that were down in the zone,” Hinch said. “And they didn’t miss some leaky pitches over the plate. They got to the pull side, their right-handed hitters did. I think it was more about what (the Royals) did. They made him work a ton and they were getting a lot of hits in the air.
“So Tarik not getting balls on the ground and he wasn’t getting a ton of swings and misses.”
More: Twitter photo shows Royals pitcher with sticky stuff on his wrist. Tigers’ response: Meh
The way the Royals were taking close sliders and curveballs and ambushing his fastball and sinker, it seemed fair to ask if Skubal might’ve been tipping his pitches.
“No,” Skubal said. “I’m not going to…No.”
He said the culprit was his execution.
“I leaked middle with a lot of things tonight,” he said. “Guys can hit those pitches. I lost velo in the fourth because it was a long inning. I’m not too worried about the velo in this aspect. It’s more about locating. A lot of my sinkers, I was trying to go in on righties and they were leaking back over the plate. And I was trying to go away from lefties and they leakjed back in.
“That’s baseball. It happens. You live and you learn and you move on. You get up tomorrow and get back to work.”
chris.mccosky@detroitnews.com
Twitter: @cmccosky