Bats go silent, arms can't contain Royals in tough loss

BOSTON -- Despite the lack of a pennant race, the Red Sox still want to finish strong and put their best foot forward each day.

However, that didn’t happen on Saturday in one of the team’s most one-sided defeats of a disappointing season. In a 9-0 loss at Fenway Park to a non-contending Royals squad, Boston was outplayed on both sides of the ball.

Here are three things that stood out from an afternoon the Red Sox can’t wait to turn the page on:

Bases loaded, nobody out, no runs

For manager Alex Cora’s team, nothing summed up the frustration of this day like the bottom of the third inning, when the 7-8-9 spots in the batting order loaded the bases with nobody out.

At the time, the Sox trailed, 2-0. However, they looked poised to get right back in the game.

Momentum swiftly dissipated. Tommy Pham swung at the first pitch from Brady Singer and popped it up.

“Tommy had a pitch he could handle, that slider was a good pitch to hit and he missed it,” Cora said.

Rafael Devers came up next with a chance to hit a grand slam for the second straight Saturday. This time, he swung at two pitches out of the strike zone and his five-pitch at-bat ended with Singer getting him looking with a pinpoint pitch on the inner half.

It was up to J.D. Martinez, Friday night's hero, whose tough season continued when he got beat on a fastball and popped out to first to end the promising inning with no runs across.

In their last 12 plate appearances with the bases loaded, the Sox are 1-for-11 while grounding into two double plays, striking out three times, drawing one walk and scoring only three times. With a runner on third and less than two outs, they are 0-for-8 with one run scored in eight plate appearances this week.

“Too many of those,” said Cora. “We’ve got a chance to cash in there and get closer in the game, and we didn’t do it and they kept putting good at-bats and making contact.”

Downhill for Rich

Left-hander Rich Hill entered Saturday’s game coming off a stellar last outing, when he fired five shutout innings with seven strikeouts in a win in Baltimore. But as has been the case quite a few times this season, Hill followed up a strong outing with a subpar one.

In this one, Hill (7-7, 4.70 ERA) gave up eight hits and four runs over 4 2/3 innings, walking none and striking out four.

After most of Hill’s tougher outings, he mentioned that the ball didn’t come out of his hand well. This time, he felt like it did. But he second-guessed his pitch usage, admitting he should have thrown more than eight cutters.

“I think the one thing that I could have improved on was pitch selection and cutter usage,” said Hill. “That was down today. I had talked with Alex about that after the game and he reinforced the importance of that, being able to use the cutter at a higher percentage.

"That’s been an extremely successful pitch for me the last couple of outings or ever since we sort of brought it in this year. I just felt pretty good with the breaking ball and maybe to my own fault, overextended the use of the dropdown slider.”

German’s tough debut

Nobody was more excited about Saturday’s game than righty Franklin German, who was selected from Triple-A Worcester prior to the game and was called on to make his Major League debut to open the top of the sixth.

The goal was for Boston’s No. 28 prospect, according to MLB Pipeline, to go a full inning. Those plans quickly were scrapped when he faced four batters and threw 23 pitches without getting a single out. The Royals went walk, single, walk, single against German, who sits in the upper 90s. Cora came out to get him before the inning snowballed further.

“He’s a big leaguer like I always say [after a debut],” said Cora. “Those secondary pitches, we’ll take a look at it, but it seems like they never offered at them, they were away or non competitive. We’ll go from here and make him better.”

What did German learn from the humbling experience?

“Just attack and put them away quickly,” German said. “Don’t try to do too much. Don’t try to elicit swings with pitches way out of the zone, just attack them more and try to finish them off with strikes."