The Kansas City Royals did something Monday afternoon that is even rarer than a perfect game. In their blowout win over the Philadelphia Phillies (KC 15, PHI 1), the Royals scored in every single inning. They only batted in eight innings because they were the home team and there was no bottom of the ninth, but this is still a rarity.
No American League team has ever scored in all nine innings.
The Royals blasted Phillies ace and possible All-Star Game starter Cristopher Sánchez for six runs in the first inning and a career-high nine runs in 3 ⅓ innings. Sánchez went into the game with a 2.00 ERA and exited with a still excellent 2.62 ERA. Here’s the line score the Royals put up against Sánchez and the Phillies:
“There was a lot in the first inning that was really positive,” Royals manager Matt Quatraro said after the game. “… Continuing to add inning after inning (was big). As you can tell, those first four innings, they were one swing away from it being a totally different ballgame … The offense stayed at it.”
Utility man Tyler Tolbert went 5 for 5 with a double and his second career home run in the blowout win. He raised his season batting line from .243/.310/.243 to .333/.383/.429 in one afternoon. The Royals had 22 hits in a game for the 11th time in franchise history. They sent 50 men to the plate and 28 reached base for a cool .560 on-base percentage.
Given the score, the Phillies put third-string catcher Garrett Stubbs on the mound in the bottom of the eighth inning, and the Royals got to him for two runs on four hits and a walk. That pushed them across the finish line and made them the 21st team to score in every inning. There have been 24 perfect games, so yes, scoring in every inning is rarer than going 27 up, 27 down.
Kansas City is the first team to score in every inning since the Chicago White Sox did it against Cleveland on Sept. 12, 2016. Despite the rarity, the Royals have done this before. They scored in all eight innings against the then-Oakland Athletics on Sept. 14, 1998. The Phillies previously gave up a run in every inning against the New York Giants on June 1, 1923.
The win and the rare feat could prove to be the highlight of the season for the Royals. They improved to 37-54 with the move and moved into a tie with the Colorado Rockies for the worst record in baseball. The Phillies are 50-41 and 3 ½ games back in the NL East.
