Royals Drop Opener

Kenny Rogers owns us. In fact, in his career, he's almost put up a Cy Young season against us. After the Tigers 3-1 win yesterday, in which Rogers gave up just 1 ER in 6 IP, he's now 19-13 against us in his career. The Royals only managed four hits (3 off Rogers) in the game, so it didn't matter how well Elarton pitched—which happened to be much better (2 ER in 5.2 IP) than most of us probably expected.

A couple of things worthy of note about this game:

We actually played good defense. Grudzielanek made a great grab on a line drive off the bat of Christ Shelton—who already had two home runs and another hit in the game. And Mientkiewicz came off the bag at first late in the game to take an errant throw from Teahen and then was still able to tag Craig Monroe out. We finished the game without any errors.

We played fundamentally sound. With the Royals down 1-0 in the fourth inning, DeJesus doubled with no outs—just barely beating the throw from Ordonez. Grudzielanek slapped the ball to Shelton at first to advance DeJesus, bringing Sweeney to the plate with a guy on third with one out and a chance to tie the game. If Ruben Gotay had been hitting in the two hole, the chances of Sweeney even getting the opportunity would have been astronomically low since Gotay seldom even makes contact with the ball as he swings out of his shoes. But Sweeney hit a harmless check swing back to Rogers and the inning looked to be over until Sanders ripped a single into the outfield to tie the game.

Unfortunately, the Royals couldn't get anything else going against Rogers and his supporting cast and three solo home runs by Tiger hitters was enough. But this is one of those games where you just tip your cap and move on without any regrets that we blew the game. We lost. And that doesn't feel nearly as bad.

The second and final game of the series will be played tomorrow afternoon at 1:10. Joe Mays goes against Jeremy Bonderman.

Angel Berroa BB Watch: 1 game played without any walks.