Aviles bad throw was not the only defensive play that cost the Royals. Joey Gathright lost a ball in centerfield that dropped amd scored a run. Miguel Olivo made a pretty horrendous error by dropping the ball after tagging out a runner at home. No it was’nt a ball jarring collision at home that caused Olivo to drop the ball, he just dropped it. But the Royals lost this one not entirely because of these mistakes but more because they could never really put anything together. They never had a rally the whole game. In the 7th inning it looked like a rally was beggining but on a run scoring hit Olivo was sent home by 3rd base coach Luis Silverio. Olivo was thrown out by a mile by Cardinal catcher Yadier Molina.

Billy Butler was called up from triple-A Omaha today before the game but was not in the line up on saturday night. After struggling at the major league level recently Butler was sent down and hit very well. Alberto Callaspo was placed on the 15 day DL after he was arrested for running a red light late at night and was charged with a DUI. It is unknown whether the arrest has anything to do with the arrest.

Luke only allowed 2 runs in his 8 pitched innings, which was his career high for innings pitched. But Hochevar was aided by the suprising play of Ross Gload who went 3-3 on the night with 2 RBI’s. Gload has not hit well at all this year and after tonoghts game he is hitting .261 with 8 RBI’s in 176 at-bats. The Royals have had everyone on the team contributing during these last 5 series that they have won.

Jose Guillen was booed by the fans at Kauffman Stadium on wednsday as he jogged down the first base line on what ended up being a pretty close play. But Guillen has had some hip injuries this season and it was a ball that appeared to be a sure out. I’m not saying that players should’nt try their hardest but this was a groundball that 99% of the time is an easy out.

Zack Greinke had a good start, going 6 innings with 10 strikeouts. Ramon Ramirez also had 3 of the 14 strikeouts by the Royals tonight. Other than Davies 1st inning blowup against the Giants the Royals starting rotation has really gotten on a roll and has been pitching pretty good.

The pitching has been there all year for the Royals though and while it has helped with the wins the Royals bats have picked up a lot from earlier in the year. In the last 3 games the offense has put up 26 runs. The Royals have even pick up the home run pace and they are no longer the worst in the league in home runs. They are also now 9-1 in their last 10games and are 7.5 games back of the White Sox for first. Hopefully the winning has not been because of weaker opponents from the NL and the team can continue on against AL opponents.

The Royals hit 3 home runs in this game with two of them being back-to-back to start off the 6th inning from David Dejesus and then Mike Aviles. The other home run came from the bat of John Buck for his 3rd home run of the season in the 5th inning. It is great to see the Royals hitting well during the last week or so considering how bad the hitting was early in the season. Jose Guillen also came through with 2 RBI’s to put him at 52 for the season. That is good enough for 3rd in the American League in RBI’s and it looks like he could break last year’s RBI leader Emil Brown’s 62 before the All-Star break.

It was an all around well played game for KC. Pitcher Luke Hochevar pitched 7 innings with 2 earned runs and 6 strikeouts. It was also good for Luke to get some run support, which he hasn’t gotten any of this year. Carlos Rosa made his major league debut tonight and got his first strikeout after being called up from AAA Omaha earlier this week in place of Brett Tomko.

Yasukio Yabuta gave up the game winning home run in the 10th inning to Chad Tracy. The Royals pitching gave up way too many walks. There were 8 in total, 7 from Greinke and 1 from Yabuta. Included in the 8 walks were 3 to Diamondbacks young outfielder Justin Upton. Also for the Diamondbacks Chris Young went for the golden sombraro with 4 strikeouts.

Tommorow is the second game of the series in Arizona. Luke Hochevar will be pitching for the Royals against Randy Johnson for the D-Backs.

Sizemore found other ways to hurt the Royals hitting 2 home runs off of starter Gil Meche. After the first blast by Sizemore, Meche began to get things under control. That is until the power hitting centerfielder came up again in the 5th inning and crushed a two run home run over the right field fence into the fountains. Brett Tomko would come in for the 6th and give up another 2 run homer.

Meanwhile the Royal bats were able to put up 4 runs against the Indians Cliff Lee, who entered friday posting the leagues lowest ERA. With 13 hits in the game it would have been nice to see the Royals put more runs on the board, but they continue to show lack of power with none of these hits being home runs. Base running blunnders also hurt the Royals, as Joey Gathright scored the game tying run off of a hit by Esteban German. The problem being before Gathright scored David Dejesus had been tagged out for the third out after over running 2nd base.

The friday night lose continues the now 12 game losing streak for the Royals. While the team gives up another lead(this time only a 3 run lead.) the streak has become extremely hard to watch for Royals fans, bringing back memories of the 2005 19-game losing streak. From 2005 to the present there have been 7 losing streaks that have reached 11 games in the major leagues, the Royals hold 4 of those.