CLEVELAND -- Baseball being defined as a game of inches is a cliché as old as the stolen base or curveball. But that’s the funny thing about clichés: they’re also usually true.

On Saturday, the Royals got a firsthand look at that cliché when they came inches away from tying the game against the Guardians. With two outs in the eighth inning, Maikel Garcia lined a double into the right-center-field gap, scoring Matt Duffy (who started the play at second) and sending Nicky Lopez into a mad dash for home as the tying run.

But before Lopez could get a chance to touch home plate, Myles Straw, Andrés Giménez and Bo Naylor teamed up for a picture-perfect relay to nab Lopez before his hand slid over plate. The play proved too much to overcome, and Kansas City lost 10-6 at Progressive Field, its sixth loss in a row.

“It was a great relay,” manager Matt Quatraro said. “Good throw, good slide, good tag. Everybody did what they could do. They beat us on that play.”

Garcia scorched the ball 102.7 mph, but Straw played it perfectly off the wall, barehanding it and firing it into Giménez, who threw a 91.7 mph laser to Naylor to get Lopez, who had a sprint speed of 28.3 ft/sec on the dash home.

“I actually think that's the best relay I've ever seen,” Guardians manager Terry Francona said. “I mean from start to finish -- shoot man, if somebody sneezed it’s gonna not work.”

While the Royals weren’t able to pull ahead of Cleveland, their offense finally woke up from their road slumber, thanks in large part to the dynamic play of Bobby Witt Jr., who went 3-for-5 and finished a double away from the cycle.

Quatraro said the strong game was a tangible example of Witt’s improved approach at the plate over the past two months. After bottoming out with a .221 batting average on May 22, Witt has hit .300 in the 41 games since to raise his average to .256.

“It’s not an easy thing to do to see your numbers climb when you have 300-plus plate appearances, and he’s doing that at the big level,” Quatraro said.

Witt opened the Royals' scoring with a two-out RBI triple in the fifth inning, which kicked off a four-inning sequence that has been few and far between for Kansas City. The next inning, the Royals chased Cleveland starter Gavin Williams on an RBI double from Kyle Isbel and a sacrifice fly from Drew Waters.

The next frame, Witt added on with a Statcast-projected 431-foot home run in the seventh before Loopez had an RBI single and Garcia made it a 7-6 game in the eighth on his aforementioned double.

“They kept coming and coming the whole eighth inning,” Francona said.

But the offense couldn’t overcome another tough outing from Brady Singer, who was roughed up for six runs in five innings on a career-high 13 hits. Singer, who tossed six scoreless frames against Cleveland at Kauffman Stadium on June 27, allowed 17 batted balls with an exit velocity above 90 mph Saturday.

“They had a really good two-strike approach,” Singer said. “I was trying to stay on the attack, but I feel like my pitches in the zone were getting hit. They had a good approach all day.”

After allowing a run to the top of Cleveland’s order in the first inning, Singer struggled to put away the bottom of the Guardians’ order the rest of the way. Will Brennan (Cleveland’s No. 7 hitter), Straw (No. 8) and Naylor (No. 9) led run-scoring rallies in the second and fourth innings.

“I don’t think I really found a groove all day,” Singer said. “I was struggling throughout the outing and was just trying to limit as much as I could.”

The start brings about the end to a frustrating first half for Singer, who has a 5.80 ERA and a 1.55 WHIP. There have been some positive signs, though, like when he allowed one run over seven innings in a win against the Dodgers), but far too many games where he struggled from the start.

“A lot of ups and downs,” Singer said. “I need to stay more consistent in the second half. There were some tough ones in there, but we’ve got the rest of the season to get after it.”