KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Bobby Witt Jr., Vinnie Pasquantino and Salvador Perez carried the Royals back to the postseason for the first time in a decade, a whirlwind turnaround from 106-loss club to a team playing for a spot in the American League Championship Series.
They fell just shy in large part due to that trio’s collective struggles at the plate against the New York Yankees.
Witt, Pasquantino and Perez were a combined 6 for 49 in their AL Division Series, repeatedly coming up short when the Royals desperately needed a big hit. That was especially evident in Game 4 on Thursday night, when Perez’s popout ended their only rally in the sixth inning, and Pasquantino and Perez struck out in the ninth as the Yankees finished off their 3-1 victory.
New York will play Cleveland or Detroot in the ALCS beginning Monday night at Yankee Stadium.
The Royals will begin thinking about next season and what it will take to energize an offense that struggled mightily to score runs down the stretch. They didn’t win a home game after Sept. 8, losing nine straight games including the playoffs.
Kansas City scored five runs in a 6-5 loss to the Yankees in Game 1, then five total over the next three games. The sudden freeze by its best hitters was striking given what Witt, Pasquantino and Perez did during the regular season.
Witt hit .332 to win the AL batting title and had 32 homers to go with a team-best 109 RBIs. Perez hit 27 homers and had 104 RBIs. And Pasquantino was on pace to give Kansas City three sluggers with 100 or more RBIs before he broke a thumb on a fluke play late in the season, an inuury that healed enough in time to serve as the designated hitter in the playoffs.
Witt went 1 for 4 on Thursday night, his lone hit turning into the Royals’ only run on Pasquantino’s double in the sixth. But the biggest rival to the Yankees’ Aaron Judge for AL MVP, Witt still finished just 2 for 17 at the plate in the series, after he had driven both of the decisive runs in the Royals’ two-game sweep of Baltimore in the wild-card round.
Pasquantino’s run-scoring double? That ended an 0-for-14 stretch over the first three games of the series.
Then there was Perez, whose clutch play in 2014 and ’15 helped the Royals win back-to-back AL pennants and capture their first World Series title in three decades. Perez had three hits coming into Thursday night, but he flied out leading off the second, popped out to end the fourth, and popped out again after the Royals finally scored in the sixth inning.
In the ninth, Pasquantino and Perez both struck out before Yuli Gurriel flied out against Yankees reliever Clay Holmes, who was part of a masterful New York bullpen that has not allowed a run over 15 2/3 innings of the postseason.
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