The Royals finished off Detroit 11-7 on Sunday at Kauffman Stadium to complete a three-game sweep and run their winning streak to eight. The Tigers have now lost five in a row and eight of nine.
Kansas City did most of its damage in two innings. Five runs in the second chased any comfort Detroit had, and Salvador Perez capped that rally by stealing his first base since 2021. Four more came in the fifth, and all of them landed on a pitcher making his major league debut.
Andrew Sears got a rough introduction
Detroit selected the contract of left-hander Andrew Sears from Triple-A Toledo before the game and used him as the bulk arm behind opener Jacob Waguespack in a planned bullpen game. Sears entered in the fourth with the Royals already ahead 5-1 after Waguespack and Ty Madden.
His first inning was clean, 12 pitches. In the fifth he walked Nick Loftin, then struck out Bobby Witt Jr. with a slider for his first big league strikeout.
The sliders stopped behaving after that. Vinnie Pasquantino doubled into the gap to bring Loftin home. Perez doubled Pasquantino in. John Rave got a hanging one and put it in the Royals bullpen in right field.
Sears finished with five runs on six hits over four innings with three strikeouts. He is 23, a 10th-round pick out of UConn in 2023 who pitched Division III ball at Rhode Island College before that, and he had thrown 9 2/3 scoreless innings in two Toledo appearances after an Aug. 9 promotion. A.J. Hinch said he will get an extended look the rest of the season.
“This was a miserable road trip,” Hinch said.
The math is still the math
Kansas City is 58-74. The eight-game run has been the best baseball the club has played in a season that mostly has not worked, and it still leaves the Royals 7 1/2 games out of the final American League wild card with six teams to pass. Detroit is the closest of those six, four games ahead.
Daniel Lynch IV started for the Royals in his fourth build-up outing as the team transitions him back to a rotation role after three years in the bullpen. He had thrown 45 pitches across four innings his previous time out.
Toronto and Cleveland are next, both of them in the race. Kansas City gets a week to find out whether any of this means anything.
