KANSAS CITY — Cardinals right-hander Andre Pallante was having a bounce-back outing against a club that handed him a loss earlier this summer. He’d adjusted. He found ways to work around self-imposed miscues as well as some fielding flubs to limit damage. But one walk to a former teammate drastically altered the outlook of his outing.
Pallante held the Kansas City Royals to one earned run and didn’t allow a hit with runners in scoring position (0 for 6). He stranded four men on base through his first four innings. However, a walk to former Cardinal Paul DeJong kept Pallante from getting through the sixth inning with a one-run lead intact.
Instead, reliever Ryan Fernandez came into the game with runners on in the sixth instead of getting a clean inning in the seventh. Fernandez, in a rare occurrence, allowed an inherited runner to score and the Royals to tie the game. The next inning, Fernandez and the Cardinals’ defense left the door open with poor execution and lackluster defense. The Royals burst through that door to the tune of a four-run inning.
People are also reading…
The Cardinals lost the finale of the Kansa City portion of the I-70 series to the Royals, 8-3, in front of an announced crowd of 36,799 comprised of Cardinals and Royals followers at Kauffman Stadium on Saturday night.
The Cardinals (60-58) lost the season series to the Royals after having won or split the previous seven season series (5-0-2) between the interleague rivals.
Pallante has now been held without a win in his last six starts. In three of those starts, including Saturday’s, he allowed one earned run. He threw a career-high 104 pitches against the Royals.
Paul Goldschmidt’s two-run home run in the second inning accounted for all of Pallante's run support.
The Royals (65-53) scored their first run and cut the deficit in half in the third inning with the help of a Willson Contreras throwing error on a slow roller on the infield grass that put a runner in scoring position with no outs.
In the fourth inning, Pallante worked around a leadoff walk and a fielding error by second baseman Nolan Gorman. Pallante retired the next two batters and then got Garrett Hampson to hit a ball sharply at shortstop Brandon Crawford for an inning-ending fielder’s choice. That kept the one-run lead intact.
In a start against the Royals at Busch Stadium on July 10, Pallante gave up four runs on six hits, including a home run, in 6 1/3 innings.
“I had a plan of pitching guys a little differently,” Pallante said. “They still had a hard-hit ball in that inning. It went right at Crawford, so some good luck went my way this time. But I thought I changed, got out of my normal plan a little bit and was able to get a pretty big at-bat, get a strikeout.
“It comes down to making pitches, and I don’t think I made any more pitches or any less pitches than I did last week. But rather than being all in the same inning, they were in different innings or didn’t get punished as much.”
The Cardinals led 2-1 heading into the sixth inning. Pallante retired the Royals’ No. 3 and No. 4 hitters, Vinnie Pasquantino and Salvador Perez, on a groundout and a strikeout to start the inning. Then, Pallante walked DeJong on four pitches.
“That was an uncompetitive at-bat on my part,” Pallante said. “I felt like I had stuff that I could get him out with. And (I was) trying to do too much or maybe a little bit of focus lapse. Whatever it was, I’ll go back and think about what I was doing at that moment in time. Yeah, that at-bat was a bad at-bat on my part.”
The next batter, MJ Melendez, singled on a fly ball that blooped into center field. That put runners on the corners and Pallante’s pitch count at a career high. Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol turned to Fernandez, who’d entered the day having allowed just 18.2% of inherited runners to score this season.
Fermin swatted a 3-1 fastball from Fernandez for an RBI single just past Crawford’s dive and into left field. That tied the score 2-2.
That run went on Pallante's tab, and he finished the day having allowed two runs (one earned) on three hits and four walks in 5 2/3 innings. He came one out shy of a quality start.
“(Pallante) did a nice job for us,” Marmol said. “He’s at 100 pitches, and he gives up the walk to DeJong and then the fly ball that drops in center. Outside of that, you think of some of the other non-plays behind him, he was able to stay focused, stay in the moment, stay present and just keep attacking. I thought he did a really nice job of that today.
“So yeah, the walk to DeJong. Then the base hit, and it kind of opened up from there. (Fernandez) came in and just wasn’t sharp. He didn’t get ahead of guys, and they took some good swings off of him.”
The bottom of seventh inning started with Cardinals right fielder Tommy Pham nearly making a sliding catch on a sinking line drive by Kyle Isbel. However, the ball popped out of Pham’s glove as he slid on the turf.
Isbel stole second base after he got a monstrous jump on Fernandez and Contreras double clutched before his throw to second base. With Isbel in scoring position, Maikel Garcia lined a single to right field and drove in the go-ahead run.
Garcia then stole second base and put himself in scoring position with Bobby Witt Jr. due up next. Witt lined an RBI triple off the wall in right-center field. Witt was the last hitter Fernandez faced.
“Honestly, it’s pretty simple,” Fernandez said. “What happened tonight? I didn’t execute very well. Didn't throw the quality pitches that I usually make, and they made me pay for it.”
Asked about his workload piling up in his first season in the majors — he has now pitched in more games (45) as any season in his professional career — Fernandez shot down the notion that he might be physically wearing down.
“I feel pretty good, health-wise,” Fernandez said. “I am a little sick right now, but that’s not an excuse in any way. That’s part of the season. You’ve got to roll with that and try to be as successful as you can.
“But I’ve just got to move onto the next outing and do what I can to be successful in that one.”
Cardinals left-hander John King came on in relief of Fernandez, and he got Vinnie Pasquantino to line out for the first out of the inning. Then gave up a two-run home run to Perez.
The Royals took a 6-2 lead into the final two innings. The Cardinals pulled within three runs in the eighth after Brendan Donovan (1 for 5) doubled and scored on a Contreras infield single and a throwing error by Garcia, but the Cardinals left to runners on base when Goldschmidt struck out to end the inning.
The Royals tacked on a pair of insurance runs in the bottom of the eighth.