By Scott Johnson, The Sports Xchange
SEATTLE — Well, the Kansas City Royals finally scored a run on Sunday.
There will be no victory parades outside of Liberty Memorial, but it’s a step in the right direction. And a sign of how far the World Series champions have fallen.
Sunday’s 4-2 win over Seattle ended the Royals’ five-game losing streak, Kansas City’s longest since 2013, and the Royals are hoping to get back on the winning track.
“You’re going to go through tough times like this,” said right fielder Jarrod Dyson, who had a key assist that led to an inning-ending putout at the plate in the sixth. “We lost the series (to Seattle), but to win the last one, that’s motivation for us as a team.”
The Royals finally pushed a run across on an Omar Infante RBI single in Sunday’s second inning, ending a scoreless streak of 27 innings that stretched all the way back to Eric Hosmer’s two-run homer in the first inning of a Wednesday loss to the Angels.
The run, and the victory, sent out a collective sigh of relief for the Royals. Manager Ned Yost and the players didn’t seem overly concerned during the five-game losing streak and through all the offensive ineptitude, but the pressure was mounting with each scoreless inning.
“You just keep grinding,” Hosmer said after Saturday night’s 6-0 loss. “You keep playing. You keep going at it. There’s no special trick, there’s no special answer. You’ve just got to continue to fight, continue to put in the at-bats, put in the work, and that’s exactly what we’re doing.”
The Royals did that Sunday, and it finally paid off.
“It feels good,” Hosmer said after hitting a solo homer in the eighth inning of Sunday’s win. “Like I said, we still have confidence in each other. We realize there’s bad luck and stuff that wasn’t going our way. It’s good to get this win before playing a tough team in the Washington Nationals.”
