Witt's firework not enough as Marsh and pitchers struggle 

KANSAS CITY -- As fireworks shot off in the neighborhoods surrounding Kauffman Stadium throughout Thursday night, the Royals did their best to create their own on the field.

Down early in a game where their pitching staff struggled to find the strike zone, the Royals' offense kept putting the pressure on but came up short, losing 10-8 to the Rays and dropping the series to end a 6-4 homestand on the Fourth of July.

The Royals did their best to mount a comeback, even down to their final out in the ninth when Bobby Witt Jr. hit his 14th homer of the year. But eight runs were not enough to win a game in which the pitching staff walked eight batters -- five of which scored -- and threw 228 pitches to get 27 outs.

Starter Alec Marsh looked and felt off from the start, walking two to lead off the first inning and seeing both come around to score. With Randy Arozarena at the plate and Richie Palacios at second base, Marsh received a violation by disengaging from the mound three times, resulting in a forced balk.

Marsh said he forgot he disengaged the first time, a fake pick to get Palacios back to the bag. The following two disengagements were pickoff attempts, and when Marsh didn’t throw Palacios out the third time he stepped off the mound, the violation moved Palacios to third base and Isaac Paredes to second.

On the next pitch, Arozarena hit an RBI groundout -- a potential double-play ball if not for the balk.

“In my head I’m trying to get an out there, especially because I was having trouble finding the zone, so I was trying to steal an out,” Marsh said. “... Those are the things that hurt us, and those runs end up scoring. I got to do a better job of making those adjustments and calming everything down, slowing the game down.”

Marsh was accountable for the sloppiness, but it was an indicator of how out of sync he was on the mound. He made some in-zone adjustments after a 28-pitch first inning, but he also had a pitch-clock violation in the third inning when facing Arozarena again, who walked this time.

“It feels like you’re battling yourself out there,” Marsh said. “Searching for things. That’s never a good place to be when you’re out there trying to compete. And then things don’t go your way, you get frustrated, you start muscling things up. Things get out of hand quickly. After [the pitch-clock violation], I could tell I wasn’t in it completely from a mental standpoint. Things start speeding up. Didn’t even see the clock there.”

Manager Matt Quatraro sensed something was off with Marsh, too. Marsh’s day ended after just three innings and 75 pitches. The righty allowed five runs on six hits and generated just five whiffs on 33 swings Thursday (15%).

“Usually, he’s more of a strike-thrower than that, and if he loses it, he gets back fairly quickly,” Quatraro said. “It was just a battle. … It wasn’t like he was throwing it off the backstop, but you gotta be sharp, especially against a team like that.”

“I’m a guy that needs to be calm, cool and collected out there,” Marsh added. “You get a start like this. You just got to flush it. We could go to the next bullpen and say I need to work on every single pitch because I didn’t land a good one today. So it’s just getting back to who I am and getting back to the competitive person I am and getting back in the zone.”

Reliever Carlos Hernández tossed the first clean frame of the game for the Royals in the fourth inning, but even that hardly lasted when Hernández walked the first three batters he faced in the fifth inning and saw all three come around to score.

The Royals' offense kept putting the pressure on and making it a game, scoring in the third, fifth and sixth innings. They scored three in the sixth, but the inning ended with Witt getting caught stealing at second, thanks to a great throw from Rays catcher Ben Rortvedt.

The Royals have overcome bigger deficits this year, but the Royals bullpen kept a comeback out of reach.

“We had trouble putting them away,” Quatraro said. “We got to two strikes a decent amount, but got to give them credit for putting the ball in play. We had trouble finishing off hitters, and then ended up throwing a lot of pitches.”