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Royals 6 Tigers 1: Roarless in Missouri

Anibal Sanchez surrenders three home runs and the Tiger bats are quiet (again).

By Tom Ferguson
Ed Zurga/Getty Images

The misery that is the 2015 Tigers season continued in Missouri. Anibal Sanchez and Yordano Ventura faced each other last Thursday in Detroit; neither was particularly effective in a game the Tigers won in walk-off fashion. It was a different story for Ventura tonight, but the Royals roughed up Sanchez again as he continued to surrender home runs at an alarming rate. This time the offense did not come to the rescue as the Tigers fell 6-1 in the second game of the road trip.

Kansas City jumped to a 2-0 lead in the bottom of the first on an opposite field home run by Eric Hosmer. Sanchez settled in nicely after that until Lorenzo Cain led off the 6th by drilling a 3-1 slider deep into the left field seats to make the score 3-0 in favor of the Royals. One out later, Mike Moustakis broke an 0 for 18 slump by pulling a two-run home run to right. That ended the night for Sanchez. He pitched 5 1/3 innings, giving up five runs on seven hits, three of them home runs.

Meanwhile, the Tigers could do nothing against Ventura. He went six shutout innings walking six and striking out eight, yielding only two hits. The Tigers loaded the bases with one out in the second but failed to score. In the fourth inning, James McCann was thrown out at the plate on a textbook relay throw by  Alcides Escobar.

The Tigers finally got on the board in the seventh inning.  Jefry Marte led off the inning with a double and later came in to score on a pinch-hit sacrifice fly by Rajai Davis. The Royals tacked on an unearned run in the eighth inning off Tom Gorzelanny to close out the scoring.

ROARS:

Jefry Marte: The youngster continues to play credible defense at first base. Offensively, he had two doubles on the night and scored the Tigers only run.

Neftali Feliz and Al Alburquerque retired all five batters they faced.

HISSES:

The Tiger offense - or lack thereof. Did not score off Ventura even though he coughed up 6 walks.

Anibal Sanchez - three more home runs!

Tiger base runners.

STREAKS AND STATS:

Anibal Sanchez has given up 28 home runs this year (tied for most in AL per Fox Sports Detroit).

Miguel Cabrera still leads the Tigers with 53 walks this season; Ian Kinsler is second with 39.

The Tigers scored in the seventh inning, breaking a streak of 17 scoreless innings.

The Tigers have scored three runs this week.

WIN PROBABILITY GRAPH:


Source: FanGraphs

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