Kansas City Royals defeat Los Angeles Angels 9-0 in rubber game - MLB Update
The Kansas City Royals’ squad presented a promising performance as they shut-out League rivals Los Angeles Angels 9-0 in the third outing of the three game series at Angels Stadium on Sunday, June 12.
The Royals’ starter Vin Mazzaro struck-out five batters to set perfect conditions for the batters, who took full advantage of it and tossed seven runs. Mazzaro also gave away five scoreless hits over seven innings. In his third start of the game, the 24-year-old
right-hand pitcher won his first game with Royals but his ERA remained 10.80, which is relatively very high as compared to other starters in the Majors.
"Basically I focused on throwing first-pitch strikes down there, attacking the zone and not trying to nibble on the corners," Mazzaro said. "When you can throw all of your pitches over for strikes, good things are going to happen. It's a good step forward."
As Mazzaro has provided a strong start, closer Blake Wood took full advantage of it to nip his three-game losing streak. Wood was searching for a win since May 31 when he last saved a game against the same team but at his home ground, Kauffman Stadium. On
Sunday night, he allowed just one walk to take one batter without allowing any run in last two innings of the outing.
Apart from Wood, the batters made full use of the good foundation put down by Mazzaro. In the second inning, Matt Treanor grounded out to second base to allow a game leading RBI single to Mitch Maier. Treanor added another RBI single to kick off the four
run fourth inning, which was then carried by Chris Getz and Alex Gordon. Getz scored an RBI single while Gordon added an RBI double to take the lead into strong 5-0 position at the end of the fourth inning.
After a scoreless fifth, Getz again came into action in the sixth inning with a line drive single to right-field to increase the advantage to 6-0. In the seventh inning, Billy Butler moved it to 7-0 with an RBI single while in the eighth inning Melky Cabrera
finalised the lead to 9-0.
The Angels employed three hurlers but each of them went for runs including a promising rookie Tyler Chatwood, who went for five runs on three hits over a three innings spell. The 21-year-old pitcher also walked three batters and struck-out five to bear his
fourth loss of the season.
Reliever Hisanori Takahashi gave one run on two hits while closer Trevor Bell scattered three runs on six hits and walked one batter over three innings.
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