Offense fades after outclassing 'one of the best' early

KANSAS CITY -- When the Royals jumped on Yu Darvish for three quick runs in the first inning Saturday night, not many thought the Padres starter would last deep into the game.

But by the time the seventh inning rolled around, Darvish was still on the mound, using the Royals’ aggressiveness shown in the first inning against them in their 4-3 loss to the Padres at Kauffman Stadium.

“I forgot who I was talking to on the bench, but I was like, ‘Man, if you’d asked me if he would have been pitching the seventh after that first inning, I would be like there’s no way,’” Hunter Dozier said. “But he’s one of the best for a reason. He’s been one of the best for a long time. He has five really good pitches, and when he had command over those and throwing them for strikes, it’s hard to face that guy.”

Darvish needed 34 pitches to get through the first inning, as the Royals sent eight to the plate and took an early lead on RBIs from Dozier -- who picked up two hits amid a tough August, in which he’s hitting .169 with a .432 OPS -- and Nick Pratto, who drove a two-run double to center.

Through the next six innings, the nifty veteran was about as efficient as he could be, needing 68 pitches and allowing just three more baserunners.

“He had to make some changes and adjustments,” manager Mike Matheny said. “That’s what veteran pitchers do, who have been around and had success for a long time. … Early, I thought the guys had a good attack mode going, making him pay, taking walks. It was a good, aggressive approach, and he made good adjustments to take that aggressiveness and turn them into quick innings.”

Darvish threw variations of seven different pitches on Saturday, according to Statcast, so the pitches the Royals saw early weren’t the same, nor was the sequencing.

"He has so many pitches and so many breaks on all of them,” Padres manager Bob Melvin said. “Sometimes, he has to streamline a little bit and figure out which ones are working. To be able to get through seven [after the rough start] was a minor miracle."

The Royals left two on base in the first and two more in the second, and those proved costly later on when the Padres mounted a comeback against Daniel Lynch.

“Leaving money on the table in the first and missed opportunity in the second, those will come back to haunt you,” Matheny said. “Even if you have a big inning like we did … you’ve got to get greedy early in the game to put teams like this away, to put pitching like this away.”

Lynch, meanwhile, saw the opposite happen. An eight-pitch first inning had him set up for a solid start, but the Padres began to figure him out. In the second, Lynch got to an 0-2 count against former Royals Draft pick Wil Myers and went to his elevated fastball for the putaway pitch. But Myers was ready for it as it leaked slightly into the zone, driving it to right-center field for a two-run homer, his third of the season and second in as many days.

“Usually in those counts, I’m trying to attack the top and middle of the zone,” Lynch said. “Either hit the top of the zone or ride it out of there. That’s a spot that I get some pretty good swing and miss, and he just put a good swing on it. It was really similar to the swing he put on the ball last night.”

San Diego’s third inning against Lynch was much like the Royals’ first against Darvish. The Padres sent eight to the plate and forced the left-hander to throw 41 pitches, surrendering back-to-back RBIs to the middle of the order in Manny Machado and Brandon Drury.

If there was a positive to Lynch’s 21st start this season -- in which he went five innings and yielded four runs -- it was that he regained the bite on his slider, getting seven whiffs on 21 swings with his bread-and-butter pitch, along with eight called strikes.

“We kind of figured out that I changed my grip and didn't realize that I’d done it,” Lynch said. “So just going back to that, I felt like it was pretty good tonight. … It was very minor, but I guess it makes a big difference.

“I can tell by the break of it. I think it’s a small change that you might not be able to notice, but to my eyes, I can tell the difference in the break.”